Pakiri/Mangawhai sand battle continues in court

A decisive battle over whether an Auckland dredging company can keep taking thousands of tonnes of sand from the Pakiri and Mangawhai shoreline began in the Environment Court on July 17.

The six-week case is an appeal by McCallum Brothers Ltd (MBL) against the refusal by Auckland Council commissioners last year to allow it to continue to extract sand in the offshore coastal marine area in the Mangawhai-Pakiri embayment.

The appeal is opposed by 16 groups and individuals, including the Environmental Defence Society, Pakiri and Te Arai residents’ groups, Kaipara District Council, Forest & Bird, the Department of Conservation, the Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society, the NZ Fairy Tern Charitable Trust and Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust.

The court had already granted MBL a temporary consent to continue dredging offshore while the case was being heard, providing the company stopped mining inshore, close to Pakiri beach (MM, July 17). Judge Jeff Smith, who is heading the hearing panel with Judge Aidan Warren, Commissioners Shona Myers and Kevin Prime and special advisor Russell Howie, expressed his hope that the cooperation and collaboration exhibited by all parties in reaching agreement on that temporary consent might continue into the offshore appeal.

However, over the following days, he also voiced frustration at aspects of the case. Several parties opposing the appeal had their lines of questioning for MBL and its expert witnesses cut short, when the judge questioned their necessity or relevance to the case.

But it was MBL itself that came in for the harshest questioning, particularly over the consent conditions it had drawn up.

“How robust are these conditions? Looking at the latest, these are well away from anything the court would consent,” Smith said. “There have been a lot of cases in this area. The sort of consent you’re talking about here is probably 10 years outof-date, they are much, much tighter than this (now). Some of these conditions, I don’t even know where they’ve come from.

“Every single page has got problems. It’s completely unacceptable.”

Smith also questioned whether major concerns raised by opposing parties over alleged breaches of consent and dredging outside permitted areas would be addressed by MBL and its witnesses.

For its part, MBL claimed that AIS, the automatic identification system that uses transceivers on ships to track marine traffic, was not a reliable method of pinpointing vessel location.

This was in response to evidence from a number of parties showing AIS tracking of MBL’s ship, the William Fraser, apparently dredging outside its permitted areas.

MBL owner and director Callum McCallum told the court AIS could not be relied upon and produced an image from a marine traffic app showing two MBL ships some distance beyond, and facing the opposite direction from, their actual location at the time.

Judge Smith said if that was the case, it could pose a huge danger to marine traffic. He also admonished McCallum over the way he answered questions during crossexamination.

“I find a lot of your answers to questions have been concerning because they seem to take what is a clear question and turn it into something else,” he said. “I’m interested in questions, not what you want to talk about.”

Counsel for MBL John MacRae told the court that Pakiri sand provided a major contribution to the economic health and wellbeing of Auckland, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the sand used in concrete in the region.

He said major infrastructure projects would be in jeopardy or at an end if companies couldn’t get Pakiri sand for their concrete, something vouched for by witnesses from a number of concrete manufacturing and construction companies.

Smith said although there were a number of major projects requiring vast quantities of concrete, the extraction of sand was a complex matter that affected diverse populations and environments.

“The difficulty is the externalities become huge,” he said. “Although the economy is part of the jigsaw, it can’t give us the complete picture.” building condition report found it needed maintenance work to bring it up to standard.

The case continues.

During the local board meeting, members approved a $120,000 refurbishment budget for the Sandspit house as part of its customer and community services capital expenditure work programme for 2023/24, with $20,000 earmarked for investigation and scoping in 2024/25 and $100,000 to deliver the actual works in 2025/26.

The estimated finish date is not until June 2026, though as a risk adjusted project, Khan said there was a chance it could be brought forward. The new proposed lease for Ngāti Manuhiri was listed on the board’s 2023/24 community leases work programme also approved at the July meeting.

Khan said when it came to vacant buildings, council could ask for expressions of interest or notify groups who had registered an interest. All applications were assessed on a case-bycase basis and local boards could nominate a community group for occupancy.

“The grant of a lease for community buildings provides exclusive use to the respective lessee,” he said. “The lessee may choose to invite other groups to use the premises when not in use by the lessee, this is by way of room hire, permitted under a community lease agreement.”

Puhoi cat reunion

A Puhoi family whose lives were thrown into chaos when their home was destroyed by Cyclone Gabrielle finally had good news last week, when two of their beloved cats, missing for nearly five months, were found. In the aftermath of the cyclone, the Robinson family were provided with emergency housing by an Ōrewa. Not long after the move, two of their three rescue cats, Coco and Oreo, escaped from the Ōrewa house. Dee Robinson says it was traumatic, especially for the couple’s three teenagers, and they searched for the cats everywhere. Then, on July 8, almost five months after the cats went missing, a picture was posted on social media of a cat found in upper Waiwera. There was no doubt it was Coco. The person who found her managed to get her into a cat cage, and Coco was reunited with the Robinsons a short time later. The same eagle-eyed rescuers had spotted a post about another cat, also found in Waiwera, that proved to be Oreo.

“When you’ve lost everything, animals are a familiar security blanket and we can’t believe we have them both back after all this time.”