My Account
By Sally Marden
reporter@localmatters.co.nz
No more sand mining – Pakiri Beach is in a state of collapse and time is running out. That was the clear and unequivocal message to McCallum Bros from locals when a hearing into renewing dredging consents spent two days at Omaha Marae and Pakiri Hall earlier this month.
A panel of four independent commissioners heard impassioned evidence from more than a dozen Maori landowners, residents and community groups that Pakiri’s soft white sand dunes had shrunk and sea life been decimated, as a result of 10 million cubic metres of sand being dredged from the sea floor over the past 80 years.
Speaker after speaker at both the marae and the hall said they were tired of fighting the same battle every few years and tired of not being listened to or understood. At Omaha Marae, kaumatua Jake Tahitahi and chair Annie Baines explained that Pakiri was distinct, as its whenua, or land, had been in uninterrupted Maori occupation and ownership by descendants of Chief Te Kiri and his daughter Princess Rahui Te Kiri since before the 1840s – including the foreshore and seabed.
“This is a speech I’ve had to make quite a few times over the last few years, and I always have to explain who we are,” Baines told the panel and McCallum Bros representatives.
“This land was left to all of us, all her [Rahui] grandchildren. We have a burden of responsibility to protect the mauri (life force) of our beach. It shouldn’t be our burden to provide the infrastructure needs of Aucklanders.
“You’re being naïve to think it hasn’t had an effect on our sea life and bird life. You keep taking and taking and if you think nothing’s happening out there, you’re just being silly.
“You’ve had a good run. You’re talking about money here, we’re talking about the earth and how it affects us.”
Tahitahi said the sand mining affected the local Maori whanau spiritually and in their relationship with the land and sea, as both sea life and the sand disappeared.
“Our children won’t enjoy what we enjoyed. That’s our role, to protect for those to come, for the future,” he said. “The land is ours, we are the land – anything that affects the land affects us. There’s a collective, continuous assault on us. This is the time. Stop.”
He also questioned the lack of a mana whenua representative on the panel, which consists of Richard Blakey in the chair, Robert Scott, Dr Sharon De Luca and Basil Williamson, who said he had sat on the Waitangi Tribunal for 14 years. Blakey said they all had to be tested every five years and that Maori issues were a big part of their role and planning legislation, although he admitted it was difficult to be decision makers “when we’re in your place”.
Several speakers at both the marae and Pakiri Hall said that when they were growing up, horse mussels and scallops were commonplace, but now they had all gone, as when sand was taken, all sea life was sucked up and destroyed. There were no longer the shells coming in, or raised sites, that the critically endangered fairy tern needed to nest, meaning nests were washed away with king tides.
At Pakiri Hall, Olivia Haddon said some of the speakers were the third generation to have to stand up and object. And while she acknowledged Callum McCallum and his three children for showing up to the hearings – something that hadn’t happened last year – she said time was running out.
“I’m not personally against McCallums – there have been multiple companies – but they are the last man standing,” she said. “The message is clear and constant and always has been. I feel like here we are again – how many times do we have to do this?
“Sand is a signifier of sea floor health. And it’s gone. This is our last line of defence. The sea is coming in.”
The youngest speaker was 18-year-old Grace Gossage Myer, who said commissioners needed to weigh up the social, cultural and environmental impacts of sand mining versus “the lone purpose of their economic interest”.
Several submitters presented before-and-after photos of Pakiri Beach, clearly showing where sand hills and dunes had shrunk or even disappeared entirely over the years, and former Leigh fisherman Adam Kellian said he had seen extensive seabed damage on his boat’s echo sounder.
“Those trenches are causing amazing erosion on the shore, it’s pulling the sand in faster and faster,” he said. “It’s all rocks and rubble, there’s no sand out there. I’ve seen the unseen damage.”
Save Our Sand founder Jessie Stanley, who was born and brought up at Pakiri, presented commissioners with a 16,000 signature petition opposing the consent application.
“According to Mr McCallum’s experts, the beach is growing now. It’s not growing, it’s eroding really quickly, because you are dragging all the sand into the sea,” she said. “It’s an outdated dinosaur technology.”
And retired environmental lawyer Simon Reeves, who attended and contributed to the 1992 United Nations Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, said there should no longer be any “expectation of entitlement” by mining companies.
“Earth is our home,” he said. “We have no other. The fairy tern has no other. Nor do tangata whenua o Pakiri. Nor indeed do the rest of us. We simply don’t recognise it, although it stares us in the face.
“Enough is enough. You’ve had your turn.”
Hearing chair Richard Blakey assured all submitters that they had indeed been heard, saying it had been a moving experience and a very important part of the hearing process.
“The next time you hear from us will be on the bottom of a decision,” he said at Pakiri. “It’s not a power we’re wielding, but a responsibility and we will discharge it carefully and considerately. We have heard you and we are listening.”
The hearing into two resource consent renewal applications by McCallum Brothers to mine sand inshore and mid-shore off Pakiri Beach over 35 years began last month and will continue on August 15, 31 and September 1 in Warkworth. An earlier application to mine sand offshore was rejected in May by a different panel, though McCallum has lodged an appeal against that decision which is due to be heard by the Environment Court in February.
An Auckland Council spokesperson said last week that as the application for the near shore mining was made before that consent expired, under the Resource Management Act, McCallum Bros was allowed to continue mining until the consenting process was finalised.
