Unwanted building materials & misc items needed for animal rescue
Howdy neighbours!
I am looking for any unwanted second hand building materials to build extra housing for my rescued ducks, plus as its duckling season and my weekly feed is now well over 100kg, any donations of feed, and old linen such as towels.
The following sorts of things would be useful if you have any you don't want.
* Kitchen lino, large pieces (room size) any colour or style, to use as flooring for ducks in wheelchairs.
* Clamshell plastic paddling pools and similar (URGENT)
* Screws especially self tapping square or phillips type 32mm or longer used is fine as long as they can be reused.
* Wire fencing, wire netting, chicken wire, sheep/cattle fencing incl offcuts
* Warratahs etc
* Plywood, old doors or old windows in wooden frames
* Metal brackets, braces supports, flat/straight or corner etc to join or brace wooden sections
* Planks of wood
* Polythene clear plastic, including the thickish clear plastic that you often find as part of the packaging on new furniture, beds, etc
* Waratahs all lengths
* Or unwanted artificial grass/Astro turf, or grass green carpet!
* Linen, particularly towels, quilts, blankets, etc (URGENT)
* Donations of feed (chicken feed, grains, cat or dog food) to help feed the 100 extra ducklings here at the moment (URGENT)
* Also if anyone has an old automatic washing machine they no longer need, it would be outdoors used to wash towels and other linen used for ducklings, so wouldn't matter if it had like small leaks etc as long as all functions (wash, spin, drain water) worked. (URGENT)(
* And if anyone has any duck weed in their streams or pond, or reeds/Bullrushes or flaxes /grasses they don't want, to plant round my duck pond.
If you can help with any of the above please text 020 406 41485
Https://www.facebook.com/uninhibitedducks
Poll: Do you think NZ should ban social media for youth?
The Australian Prime Minister has expressed plans to ban social media use for children.
This would make it illegal for under 16-year-olds to have accounts on platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.
Social media platforms would be tasked with ensuring children have no access (under-age children and their parents wouldn’t be penalised for breaching the age limit)
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Do you think NZ should follow suit? Vote in our poll and share your thoughts below.
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85.5% Yes
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13.4% No
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1.2% Other - I'll share below
What's your favourite recipe for courgettes?
Kia ora neighbours. If you've got a family recipe for courgettes, we'd love to see it and maybe publish it in our magazine. Send your recipe to mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz, and if we use it in the mag, you will receive a free copy of our January 2025 issue.
Waimakariri district plan faces more delays amid changing rules
By David Hill, Local Democracy Reporter
Changing Government legislation is causing headaches for council staff, as Waimakariri’s new District Plan is set to be delayed again.
Waimakariri District Council development planning manager Matt Bacon said he was relieved when the last of the public hearings ended last week.
But with final council reports due on December 13, staff will have just two working days to present the final District Plan on December 17. A district plan helps to control and manage the development of the district or city.
‘‘We are working through what it looks like and we will update the council at its meeting on December 3,’’ Bacon said.
‘‘But we will likely seek another extension from the environment minister and the Resource Management Act (RMA) minister.’’
The council first notified its draft District Plan in September 2021, but within months legislation was introduced with new medium density residential housing standards (MDRS).
‘‘We needed to call for further submissions and we had to create a separate hearing panel to consider the plan variations to allow for the MDRS,’’ Bacon said.
‘‘We have tried to merge the process as much as possible, as well as looking at re-zoning and incorporating other new legislation.’’
When the draft plan was first notified there was no National Policy Statement (NPS) for Indigenous Biodiversity, but an NPS was introduced - and then replaced.
The Natural and Built Environment Act came into being last year and then repealed, and then there is the NPS on Urban Development and the Greater Christchurch Spatial Plan.
The Government is now working on more RMA reforms and Environment Canterbury is working on the Canterbury Regional Policy Statement.
And then there is the Fast-Track Approvals Bill, which includes three proposed housing developments in Waimakariri - two of them outside of the future urban development areas identified in the Greater Christchurch Spatial Plan.
All three housing developments in the Bill have been included in submissions to the District Plan, including a proposed 850-home development at Ohoka, near Rangiora, which is also subject to an Environment Court appeal.
‘‘We haven’t seen the detail, so whether it is the same proposals, we don’t know, but they are different processes so we have to just keep doing what we are doing, until we are told otherwise,’’ Bacon said.
‘‘It might just be a timing thing, but we just don’t know.’’
Bacon said delaying the District Plan until new legislation is in place is not an option.
‘‘We are looking at what we can control and having a watching brief, and we will look at transitional timings because we don’t always have to immediately change planning documents when new legislation comes in.’’
Planning manager Wendy Harris said navigating changing Government legislation is a normal part of council planning work.
‘‘If we waited we wouldn’t do anything and we would go nowhere.’’
■ LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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