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The William Fraser sand dredging vessel.
A resource consent hearing for an application to dredge two million cubic metres of sand offshore from Mangawhai and Pakiri will be heard from March 1 to 8 at the Warkworth Town Hall.
Kaipara Ltd has applied to renew its consent to extract 150,000 cubic metres of sand a year from a depth of 25 metres.
Council received 661 submissions on the application, with just four being in support and the remainder in opposition.
Despite this, Council consultant planner Colin Hopkins has recommended that the application be accepted “subject to contrary or additional information being received at the hearing”.
It is also expected that hearing dates for a resource application by McCallum Brothers to extract 76,000 cubic metres of sand each year for 14 years will soon be announced.
As Mahurangi Matters went to press, a public demonstration against the proposed sand mining was due to be held in Mangawhai Heads on Sunday, February 14.
The Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society was expected to be joined by lifeguards, school students and surfers to discuss generating public interest in opposing further sand mining.
Protesters planned to link together to spell out SOS in giant letters across the beach – “save our sand”.
Ken Rayward, of the Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society, is urging concerned residents to sign a petition at www.stopsandmining.co.nz and make a submission on the McCallum Brothers’ application.
He says there is only a finite amount of sand and when it is taken from the seabed it causes erosion of the beach at Mangawhai and Pakiri.
“If the applications are successful, an excess of 5 million cubic metres of sand will be removed. No coastline in the world could withstand that kind of orchestrated onslaught,” he says.
According to the McCallum Brothers website, sand is an important commodity for the building and construction industry in Auckland for its use in making concrete.
