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Stop dredging our harbour
Dredging within the Mangawhai harbour destroys shellfish beds living on the sandy floor. One only has to look at what is sucked up and dumped on the sandspit, thousands of dying pipis and cockles, and numerous scavenging gulls feed on them. These shellfish are natural food for small fish and birds that live in the estuary.
Why is the Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society (MHRS) so keen to keep the current northern entrance open? Because it is protected by Heads Rock and boats can pass through safely.
If harbour silting were to continue and the channel became too shallow for boats, it is possible that a new channel would eventually open up further south near Tern Point, close to where the original southern channel appeared in 1988 after Cyclone Bola. For three years after this cyclone, Mangawhai had two exit channels. It ended with the ‘Big Dig’ in February 1991.
I remember fishing in this southern channel, and it was good fishing, too. If this did happen, this would be the only change, a channel in a different place!
If anything, flow out of the harbour would increase because the two rivers that empty onto the harbour would be closer to, and directly opposite, the ‘new’ southern entrance and this would mean a cleaner harbour.
Research done by MHRS in 2023 shows that 33 per cent of visitor respondents said they like to swim in the harbour, five per cent participate in paddling sports, five per cent fish in the harbour and only eight per cent go ocean fishing.
If 92 per cent of visitors do not need boating access into and out of the harbour, why are all us ratepayers paying the annual levy for the harbour to be dredged?
In Mangawhai, dredging does not provide public benefit as 92 per cent of people do not need ocean access and it is wrong to say “maintaining navigability is a role that MHRS undertakes on behalf of the community”. They do this for their own reasons, probably for the benefit of their own members.
And what about the remaining 49 per cent of visitors who responded to the survey?
I assume they come to Mangawhai for reasons that have nothing to do with the harbour, e.g. location, family and so on.
So stop dredging, interfering with and damaging the seafloor. Let nature take its course.
Christine Silvester, a ratepayer since 1985
Trump of the North
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” An over-used quote, but it came straight to mind when I saw our mayor boasting he was the ‘Trump of the North’ in a Radio NZ news story of December 30.
To model himself on someone so dishonest, bullying, lacking in empathy and narcissistic is an astounding insight into the mayor’s mind. As the Trump of the North, is he telling us he strongly identifies with a man who has convictions for sexual assault and massive business fraud? Perhaps he is trying to forewarn us that he will not tolerate losing the 2025 election for mayor, and will contest the results by means fair and foul. And, on failing to overturn a ‘rigged election’, he’ll rally his friends and supporters at The Club in Mangawhai, and ransack the Council building with swinging golf clubs.
Is that really who we want leading our community? Are these the values we want to parade to the youth of Kaipara? Do we really need another three years of such aberrant logic and character? What exactly is it about Mr Trump that the mayor admires?
Like President Trump, Mr Jepson sees himself as an anti-woke (whatever that means), no-nonsense, get-things-done type of guy. Being anti-woke appears to have been the motivation behind the mayor’s frenzied rush to get rid of the Māori ward, a decision that has cost Council around $200,000 in legal fees and revisions to policy, versus $5000 for the alternative of a referendum at the 2025 election – quite some achievement.
The mayor prefers to be thought of as anti-woke, rather than just anti-Māori, but is it too much to hope for a mayor who is inclusive rather than exclusive, empathetic and willing to compromise rather than bullying and narrow-minded? For the time being, it appears so.
‘There’s too much still to do,’ the mayor says in his early bid for a second term. And get it done, he will, with an ovine majority in council who appear happy to rubber-stamp Mr Jepson’s every wish.
I appreciate that the mayor works hard for the district, but he appears to not understand the boundaries between personal motivations and biases, and doing what’s best for Kaipara. More and more, the mayor treats Kaipara District as his personal fiefdom and inflicts personal dogma upon an unwilling populace.
Let’s marinate on that over summer and bear in mind that, while Mr Trump has enjoyed a Lazarus-like return to the US Presidency, he was voted out after his first term when it became apparent how truly dreadful he was at his job.
Luke Williamson, Kaiwaka
