Kiwis Against Seabed Mining

Pakiri Mangawai Costs :

Groups battling to rid Rodney’s east coast of sandmining say their costs are rising and the money would be better spent on restoring beaches and harbours.

They say they have spent years fundraising to try to reverse degradation of beaches and harbours, with little help from the Government or local councils.

Friends of the Pakiri Beach are going back to court on December 5, to oppose sandmining along Pakiri’s foreshore.

The group will suppport the Auckland Regional Council in the Environment Court appeal by Pakiri mining companies Seatow Ltd and McCallum Bros, which are fighting the ARC decision not to renew their resource consents to mine inshore at Pakiri.

“It’s frustrating,” says Friends chairman Nick Williams. “We have won once but we have to go back to court. It’s not cheap.

“Meantime the sandmining companies can continue their mining, which will probably pay their court costs. People complain about Resource Management Act red tape but in this case the mining companies are hiding behind it.”

The court battles will cost his group up to $260,000. The Government takes $1.70 in royalties for each cubic metre of sand mined and the sand is sold for about $50 a cubic metre.

Mangawhai residents have also had to empty their pockets, says Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society publicity officer Ron Batty.

“We spent more than $260,000 in legal costs, technical data preparation and bringing expert witnesses to the court,” he says. “If you add that to what the Pakiri group will be spending, half a million dollars will have been spent on something the Minister of Conservation could have stopped at any time. Instead he chose to follow due process.”

Pakiri Beach and Mangawhai Harbour are part of the same bay, and the community money could have been spent restoring past damage to the beaches, say both parties.

The Mangawhai community is still footing the bill for harbour restoration through a rates levy of $40 a household, administered by the Kaipara District Council.

“The Northland Regional Council say it hasn’t any funds to help us,” Mr Bratty says. “The Department of Conservation say it has no money to put into the nature refuge at Mangawhai, but the Government has taken $1.3 million in royalties from sandmining in Mangawhai since the late 1970s.

It has gone into the consolidated fund. We have played patsy to these groups for too long.”

Mangawhai Harbour Restoration chairman Graham McKenzie says the Mangawhai community has raised $1.92 million over the last 14 years to restore the harbour, which he says was once the biggest ecological disaster in New Zealand’s history.

It is now raising another $260,000 to buy a new dredge to maintain the water flow in the harbour and to return some of the sand to the dunes.

The NRC has donated $20,000 to the project.

Northland Regional Council chairman Mark Farnsworth says he is fully behind the efforts of the Mangawhai community to save their harbour, but the cold reality is that local problems have to be resolved by local communities.

“We as a council must make sure adverse events are not allowed,” he says. “But it is beyond the resources of the NRC to help restore the harbour. Ninety per cent of our boundaries are coastline and it is happening all along the coast.”

The Government ‘should have coughed up’ for Mangawhai, Mr Farnsworth says.

“They are now saying where there are hazard interface problems along the coast, they are looking at establishing coastal exclusion zones, where there is no activity allowed.”

 

Published Rodney Times 10 Nov 2005

Author Lynley Smith