Award winner • Best Community Involvement Over 20,000 Circulation • NZCNA Awards 2014
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Tuesday • JuLY 29 • 2014 PHONE: 09 235 78 35 FAX: 09 235 78 34
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INSIDE THIS WEEK: PG 19 - 23
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VOL 26 • NO.29
Best of the best
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The Waiuku Volunteer Fire Brigade held its annual Honours Night on Saturday evening, with the supreme award going to firefighter Dave McLeod. Dave, pictured left with Area Commander Larry Cocker, was chosen by the officers of the brigade as the winner of the Mackintosh Shield, for the firefighter who was the best all-round, and who put in the most effort in the previous year.
Saturday 8-4 Sunday 9-4
Worldwide from Waiuku A Waiuku farming family are among the faces of a Fonterra YouTube series.
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Championship medal A Franklin sportsman collects a bronze medal at the World Championships.
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Community digs in Locals gathered to help plant 1400 native trees as part of a rejuvenation of a historic stream in PAGE Mauku on Sunday.
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Hundreds attend local whitebait meetings The prospect of compliance charges, demolition of whitebaits stands, or having to have registered plumbers inspect baches on the Waikato River made for a lively meeting at the Waiuku War Memorial Hall on Thursday evening. Over two hundred people packed the hall for the Waiuku leg of a series of Whitebait Hui organised by Waikato Raupatu Trust and Waikato Regional Council last week. The meeting followed one at Tuakau the previous week, and was before one at Port Waikato on Friday afternoon. The meeting was set down for two hours, but judging by the number of people in the hall and the amount of issues raised,
GARY PYES
there was never going to be enough time to deal with all the questions that a meeting of this nature was going to raise. Local people are passionate about what they see as their rights and have been white baiting for decades on the river and were not about to be told what they can or can’t do. This was loudly echoed around the room when the Waikato Regional Council’s Rob Dragten opened the meeting and asked the large audience if they had any questions they hoped the meeting would answer. This led to scores of questions and a rowdy start with one individual from the upper gallery being asked to leave the premises for his disruptive behaviour.
Rob Dragten chaired the meeting with the plan to run through a set of slides and explain why the group was there and what they had found out about whitebait stands on the river. This proved extremely challenging at times as people continued to ask more and more questions and were not satisfied with the some of the answers given. Cheri van Schravendijk-Goodman, Waikato Raupatu River Trust policy adviser tried to calm the room and relieve Rob who was struggling to contain the questions being fired from the floor. Many in the room appeared to struggle to understand what the actual purpose of the meet-
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ing was and what the Waikato Regional Council and Waikato Raupatu River Trust were trying to achieve. According to Rob, it was to draw the attention to a baseline report on whitebait stands and associated structures in the lower Waikato River, the impact these could be having on water quality, the apparent lack of compliance regarding these structures and all of this was being done without blaming anyone or pointing fingers. It appears for the Waikato District Council, at least, the main concerns are unsafe structures, unsafe fireplaces and sewage discharge, with concerns over the current and future health of the river. Continued on page 3.