Southdown is an

industrial suburb An industrial suburb is a community, near a large city, with an industrial economy. These communities may be established as tax havens or as places where zoning promotes industry, or they may be industrial towns that become suburbs by urban ...

Auckland Auckland ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...

, New Zealand. The main company in the suburb was the former Southdown Freezing Works, part of a large industrial zone located near the

North Island Main Trunk The North Island Main Trunk (NIMT) is the main railway line in the North Island of New Zealand, connecting the capital city Wellington with the country's largest city, Auckland. The line is long, built to the New Zealand rail gauge of and ser ...

railway line. The buildings were decommissioned during the 1980s and 1990s, releasing large areas of land to be redeveloped as office parks. For many years the abattoirs located here were discharging large amounts of untreated waste into the

Manukau Harbour The Manukau Harbour is the second largest natural harbour in New Zealand by area. It is located to the southwest of the Auckland isthmus, and opens out into the Tasman Sea. Geography The harbour mouth is between the northern head ("Burnett ...

. This had a detrimental effect on the ecology of the harbour, which at the turn of the 20th century had been a popular and attractive place to swim, sail, fish and gather shell fish. For most of the middle of the 20th century it was a health hazard and its shell-fish a probable source of food poisoning. Since the freezing works were fully closed in 1981,''New Zealand Historical Atlas'' - McKinnon, Malcolm (Editor);

David Bateman David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damas ...

, 1997, Plate 97 the water quality has improved greatly. The

Waikaraka Cycleway The Waikaraka Cycleway is an off-road cycleway in the south of the Auckland isthmus, New Zealand, running from the suburb of Wesley along New Zealand State Highway 20 to Onehunga and then continuing along the shoreline of the Manukau Harbour ( ...

ends at the bottom of Hugo Johnston Drive, next to the defunct

Southdown Power Station Southdown is an industrial suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. The main company in the suburb was the former Southdown Freezing Works, part of a large industrial zone located near the North Island Main Trunk railway line. The buildings were decomm ...

. Hugo Johnston Drive is the site of a historic 2.5ha

asbestos cement Asbestos cement, genericized as fibro, fibrolite (short for "fibrous (or fibre) cement sheet", but different from the natural mineral fibrolite), or AC sheet, is a composite building material consisting of cement and asbestos fibres pressed ...

dump used by

James Hardie Industries James Hardie Industries plc is an American-Irish global building materials company and the largest global manufacturer of fibre cement products. Headquartered in Ireland, it is cross-listed on the Australian and New York Stock Exchanges. Its m ...

from 1938 to 1983. The nearby Southdown Reserve (opposite the defunct Southdown Power Station) has been closed to the public since March 1999, after workers discovered asbestos material there.

Southdown Power Station

The Southdown Power Station was developed by the Southdown Cogeneration Joint Venture, a joint venture between TransAlta and Mercury Energy. The plant had two LM6000 gas turbines and one steam turbine, fueled on natural gas and producing 114MW. The plant was expected to emit about 410,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. In 2000, Mighty River Power purchased 50% of the plant. and purchased the remainder in 2002. In March 2015, Mighty River Power announced that it would decommission Southdown Power Station and sell the plant overseas.

Southdown railway station

Southdown railway station was a

station Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle statio ...

on the Southern Line of the Auckland suburban railway network. It was opened to passenger traffic in 1905 and was closed in 2004. Services were withdrawn by the

Auckland Regional Transport Authority The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) was the central co-ordinating agency for transport (especially but not only public transport) in the Auckland Region of New Zealand from 2004 to 2010. In this role, ARTA provided public transport s ...

(ARTA) on 30 May 2004 due to low patronage and safety reasons. In the years immediately preceding its closure, patronage had increased on Auckland suburban trains but Southdown had not followed the trend and passenger usage of the station had declined to only approximately forty people per weekday. Safety concerns were raised due to the poor state of the footbridge used to access the platform, and the fact that to access the footbridge, passengers had to cross an unprotected freight

siding Siding may refer to: * Siding (construction), the outer covering or cladding of a house * Siding (rail) In rail terminology, a siding is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line, branch lin ...

.Auckland Regional Transport Authority
"Trains to No Longer Stop at Auckland's Southdown Station from May 30"
accessed 3 November 2007.

References

External links

Photographs of Southdown
held in Auckland Libraries' heritage collections. Suburbs of Auckland Populated places around the Manukau Harbour {{Auckland-geo-stub