March protests harbour pollution

The Whangarei Harbour has been given a voice, with hundreds of people taking to the streets to protest against pollution.

About 500 people took part in the Save the Harbour march from Laurie Hall car park to Forum North on Friday.

But the Whangarei District Council is warning a solution will not happen easily and will not be cheap.

The marchers were protesting against an application by the district council to the Northland Regional Council to renew its consent to discharge raw sewage into the harbour during emergencies.

This year there have been nine such overflows – says one march organiser, former mayoral candidate Warren Slater.

The council also wants to discharge raw sewage into the Waiarohia Stream to stop it overflowing on to Butter Factory Lane during storms.

Jill Kahika presented a 5500-signature petition asking the council not to go ahead with the application, to mayor Stan Semenoff. She plans to collect more signatures before next year’s hearings.

But Mr Semenoff says the council has to have the resource consent.

If it doesn’t have the consent the overflows will still happen, and ratepayers will be sued, he says.

Fixing the problem will cost up to $25 million but the council must, under law, use the long term council community plan process to be guided by how ratepayers want their money to be spent, he says.

Submissions to the plan open in February.

Mr Semenoff says the council is caught between a rock and a hard place but is determined to make the right decision for the district.

"The issue we have is how much better do we want to manage this and how much do we want to spend?

"It’s a balancing act between environmental protection and the cost of implementing it."

Options include storage facilities to hold the diluted sewage during storm events until it can be treated, or using a sand or UV filter before releasing it to the harbour.

Green party co-leader Russel Norman is calling on central government to help councils like Whangarei pay for vital sewage infrastructure as part of its infrastructure programme.

"We need to prioritise things that make our society more sustainable in the future.

"Tourism is our second biggest export earner, people do not come to New Zealand to swim in sewage," he says.

"If we don’t have clean harbours and rivers then what else do we have?"

One march organiser, Haydn Solomon from the Whangarei Alliance, wants councillors to use the march to their advantage when applying for funding from Wellington.

The Whangarei Alliance is a group of hapu that has Treaty of Waitangi claims on the harbour and wants to see it cleaned up for the good of all.

The carefully co-ordinated march ended with a public meeting and then a concert in Cafler Park.

Speeches were made by march organisers, Mr Norman, medical officer of health Jonathan Jarman, seven-year-old Chris Geerkens and 14-year-old outrigger canoe world champion Jiah Thomas.

But when Mr Semenoff tried to speak he was heckled and jeered at.

A group of friends carried a toilet sculpture with the words ‘We are all downstream’ and presented it to the council.

James Bellamy says solutions to the sewage overflows are out there.

Places in Europe are generating revenue off sewage through compost and power generation, to help off-set the costs of services, he says.

- © Fairfax NZ News