About $76,000 from Papakura local Board’s community grants programme has been reallocated to better support five major environmental projects within the area.
The largest additional funding goes to Pest Free South Auckland’s community pest monitoring and trapping programme in the Margans Bush / Redhill Scenic Reserve, which receives another $22,000 on top of its approved $50,000 budget.
Te Koiwi pond enhancement and the Papakura Stream restoration programme both receive $15,000 boosts on original budgets of $11,200 and $14,000 respectively, while Papakura Waste Minimisation gets a $12,000 top up to its $20,000 funding and the Wai Care Programme $12,627 on its $32,000 budget.
Papakura Local Board chair Brent Catchpole says it's important that funds that remain unspent are reallocated before they have to be offered up as savings.
“It can be money saved when projects don’t use the full budget allocated to them, or it can be funding that is unable to be spent because projects don’t go ahead for various reasons.
“The environmental projects that are receiving extra funding are all projects doing fantastic work in the area, and at its simplest, they’ll be able to do more because they have more.”
He says the pest free work aligns the board with others in the wider region and includes everything from weeding and planting days to animal trapping and children’s moth plant hunts.
Waste minimisation efforts seek to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, and the Wai Care work includes a school programme that enables stream and marine health investigations, while the Papakura Stream restoration efforts are made alongside the Manurewa board.
Te Koiwi pond enhancement is a partnership with Papakura Marae to regenerate the park and pond.
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