Greater Wellington Councillor Ros Connelly is excited about the future of this project.
“We are doing works on 15 sites along Te Awa Kairangi (Hutt River) and Ruamāhanga River, working with 30 individual businesses. We're not just building infrastructure, we're building people, businesses, and jobs", Connelly says.
The greater programme includes the planting of 60,000 trees, approximately half of which will come from the local Rimutaka Prison nursery.
Contractor Paul Albert of Mills Albert says that for works at the Royal Wellington Golf Club site, there were two phases to the project: physical works which included over 5,500 tonnes of rock, and a social procurement project.
“We’ve been fortunate to have the ability to work with local iwi and have hired a civil engineer from Ngāti Toa to work on this project. For Mills Albert, a Māori owned business, the ability to engage with local iwi has strong connections with our company and we're currently doing this in other parts of the country - we feel it has huge importance, because this is their area as well.”
The Royal Wellington Golf Club site is due for completion in January 2022, with the remaining project sites finishing by June 2022.
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