Taranaki couple fear bypasss will force them out of their home

A Taranaki couple are vowing to fight to the bitter end to stay in their home which is in the path of the province's biggest roading project in generations.

Tony Pascoe has lived his entire life in the Mangapēpeke Valley. He and his wife Debbie raised their children there.

But now the $200 million Mt Messenger bypass project looms large.

Nestled at the northern entrance to Mt Messenger is 3072 Mokau Road.

A modest weatherboard dwelling, surrounded by the detritus of decades of farm life, it is home to Tony and Debbie Pascoe.

Beyond the chooks and dog kennels lies the Mangapēpeke Valley, kilometres of wetlands surrounded on each side by native bush, some of it hundreds of years old.

Tony Pascoe, who runs a few beef cattle here, cannot believe it has been chosen as the new route for State Highway 3.

"You've got your kahikatea, rewarewa, your five-finger (whauwhaupaku) and whiteywoods (māhoe). I mean there's about 70 different varieties of native orchids in here. I'm not up to play with all the sorts of trees in here, but there's a huge amount.

"There's some back here where people just go 'wow, there's not many of these around'."

And then there's the wildlife...

"There's 23 species of native bird they say and I've seen most of them over the years. There's your long-tailed bat. The creek's full of eels and crayfish and native fish.

"And this valley is full of kiwi. Just beside that tree the other night, there was a kiwi going for it, one over the valley going for it, one over there going for and two back at home going for it."

Tony said it would be an ecological disaster if the road went through.

The Transport Agency beg to differ.

Senior manager of project delivery Andrew Thackwray said the route was chosen from a short list of five following a robust process involving key stakeholders, the community, and technical specialists.

"It avoids the ecologically sensitive Waipingao Valley and the large active landslide feature to the north of Mt Messenger which affects the current SH3 corridor. It delivers the overall project objectives to enhance road safety, resilience and reliability and contributes to regional economic grow."

The 6km bypass, which included two bridges and a 235m tunnel, would also be four to five minutes quicker than the existing route.

That's not good enough for Marie Gibbs of the Poutama Kaitiaki Charitable Trust, which is supporting the Pascoes in their High Court challenge to interim consents granted by the Environment court.

"Tony and Debbie and Poutama are here to protect this land and this valley. We don't want the road to go up here, but if it must go up here we want as little damage done as possible.

"You can't just sit down at a desk in Wellington and look at this valley on a map and design a road here without coming up and talking to the people here and learning the history."

Gibbs reckoned tweaks could be made to the existing road.

"There's alterations they can make to that route to make it less expensive and to make it a really good option. A good road, make a bigger tunnel and bypass the top windy section.

"You know we don't need a 100km/h road over the mountain. If we got a 70km/h to 80km/h road over there it would be great."

But the Transport Agency has already cut a deal with Ngāti Tama, the iwi whose rohe the road passes over.

It is swapping the 20 hectares needed for the bypass for a 120ha parcel that will give them better access to a block of Treaty settlement land.

The deal also includes a $7.7 million mitigation and compensation payment, and an ongoing pest management scheme.

The Department of Conservation, which originally submitted against the route, is also now onboard.

Chief planning advisor David Spiers said its position was based on conservation outcomes relating to the least possible impact on the natural environment.

"We acknowledged there will be a loss of flora and fauna in the immediate vicinity of the road. The purpose of the off-set and mitigation package is to address this loss and, over time, significantly enhance the biodiversity of other nearby and similar areas."

Spiers said the predator control programme would be key to improving the ecology of the area long-term, including habitat for taonga species such as kōkako, long-tailed bats and kiwi.

Tony Pascoe, who would like to see the land turned into a reserve, did not buy that.

"It will kill the valley. It will be stuffed. It will just annihilate them. You can't put 150, 200, 300 machines in here with all the oil and the diesel, and 150 to 200 people with utes and trucks. The eels and crayfish, the big kōkopu, the fish and that sort of stuff, native fish, they'll have nowhere to hide."

The Pascoes have been offered two compensation packages a $176,000 deal that would see them return to their home and what's left of their land after the road goes through or a $660,000 deal, including an 11ha parcel of land on Mt Messenger and an unspecified contribution to a new home.

But walking away was not something Debbie Pascoe wanted to even imagine.

"When you love something as much as we love the bush and being here, you can't walk right away from it. It's going to be a very, very hard day and I hope it never ever happens. To see the destruction they are going to do here, it's going to be unbelievable."

For Tony, it was not about the money.

"When they came and slammed their hand on our table a couple of days before December 1st, 2017. When they said 'you won't be able to live in your house' and I said 'this is our home, where are we going to live?' And they said 'we don't know'.

"And the property group fellas have told me two or three times since 'your home is worth nothing'. It's our home. A lot of people come to our home. A lot of people come back to this valley and say 'wow Tony, you are so lucky to have this'."    

The High Court will begin hearing appeals against the interim consents in New Plymouth on Monday.