Wipeout at Whangamata

When the Minister of Conservation summoned up the courage to kill off the marina at Whangamata, the decision was greeted with a predictable outcry from various quarters.
The gross overuse of the word "outrage" got yet another outing. Not content with this word being associated with cartoons that looked innocuous to most of us, marina proponents leapt onto their high horses howling "outrage" at a Minister actually using the powers granted to him. A former National Minister of conservation, no doubt embarrassed by years of missed opportunities to do something about the RMA, also chimed in opposing any Minister having a veto, just in case he ever gets the job back and has to make a decision.
My name was lent to a group of mainly surfers opposing the granting of the marina license, so I suppose I ought to clarify my position. I certainly don’t buy into the envy group who oppose any sign of wealth in society and therefore oppose marinas as they might show up the objector’s own poor economic performance. In the right place I support marinas and would most likely take up a berth on one here in Mangonui if that ever becomes an option.
However, I regard good surf breaks as taonga or true national treasures and the Bar at the mouth of the Whangamata Harbour is one of our best, right up there with Raglan, Ahipara and Kaikoura. We have few enough of them and have already lost a few to ill-considered boat ramps such as at North Reef in Takapuna.
I took the trouble to read the engineer’s report on the Whangamata Marina. I am an experienced civil engineer and can tell a report written carefully by an engineer who has not been given a sufficiently large budget to fully investigate a proposal. I’ve written a few myself and they are full of phrases like "don’t consider it a high probability", "may not occur" and other prevaricating words that let the engineer get paid by the client without actually committing to paper anything that might come back to bite him.
I searched for a clear unequivocal statement that the construction of the Whangamata marina would not damage the surf break at the Whangamata Bar. There was no such statement! In the event that the marina is built and the surf disappears will they fill in the marina. I don’t think so, so why take the risk?
The only way a competent engineer can be sure is to build a hydraulic model of the harbour, flush it with tidal and storm flows and see what happens, then change the model to reflect the new marina and do all the tests again to see if anything adverse happens. To the best of my knowledge this never happened.
Much is made of the time taken and money spent by the marina proponents, but the unfortunate thing is that the money was spent on lawyers, not engineers. Harbours don’t know about laws but they do know about physics and environmental change.
This shows up the whole sorry state of our environmental considerations and processes here. Foolishly, they are dominated by the legal profession. Newspapers write of how could the Minister interfere with judicial process. Well, I’m glad he did, as the judiciary have no place in the environment. They are not suitable trained and have no understanding of the impacts, so often make dumb decisions and this was one of them.
The marina proponents should be offered the opportunity to prove that nothing adverse would happen to the surf, and if they really believe that and agree to reinstate the harbour as it was at their expense if something happens to the surf break, then I would support the marina getting approval. In the meantime the Minister has fended off the risk.
He is right to get coastal development looked into. I am in favour of suitably safeguarded development, particularly of those places already compromised so that we can leave alone those wildernesses that do exist. We also need to look at the growing restrictions on Kiwis actually getting to the coast, which is being locked up by owners who need to be reminded that we all live together here.
Wayne Brown