Sand mining permit fight a long drawn out process

 

JULIA WADE

Sand along Te Arai’s coastline continues to be the hot commodity in a long council process to see if the sought-after resource will be allowed to be dredged at the same volumes and nearshore locations as in past years by a construction company, or if restrictions will be imposed.

In May this year Auckland company McCallum Brothers Ltd (MBL) submitted a resource consent to Auckland Council (AC) for a renewal of their existing coastal permits –granted in 2006 and due to expire this September – to continue their operation of dredging along the Te Arai-Pakiri coastline and up to Mangawhai’s border.

The company extracts 76,000 cubic metres of sand every year from the nearshore area in water depths between five and ten metres, to supply Auckland’s need for essential construction material, an operation the company is seeking permission to continue for a further 25 years.

According to AC, MBL’s application ‘is still on hold while we await further information’ which MBL chief operating officer Shayne Elstob says ‘is out of our control’. “We are still going through the council process, but unfortunately due to a number of reasons it is taking longer than we would have hoped.”

In the meantime MBL has commissioned their new quieter vessel the ‘William Fraser’, which has an extra loading capacity ‘requiring less time on station at Pakiri’ to continue extracting sand mainly after nightfall.

Slow process
Local environmental organisation Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society (MHRS), who have monitored the nearshore sand mining activity since their formation 25 years ago, are also waiting on the council process which chair Doug Lloyd knows will take ‘quite a bit of time’.

“As far as the Society are concerned, we are strongly opposed to the sand mining, it’s in our DNA to fight these things,” he says. “But it’s a long drawn out process… council will keep asking for more information from the McCallum’s who will have a certain time to gather it. Once council are satisfied they have all the information they need, they notify the public and then the submission goes to the environmental court which could take one year to 18 months… so it will be a while before we have the opportunity to do anything.”

Meanwhile companies can continue to work on an expired consent while this process is taking place, he says: “It’s how the system works.”

Pakiri eroding away
One of the most critical things MHRS want the community to be aware of Lloyd says, is that Te Arai-Pakiri’s sand is a finite source, brought up to the embayment 800 years ago on the currents of the Waikato River before the channels changed to flow to the west coast, ‘so there is little new sand coming in’.

“Sand comes mainly out of rivers. The embayment from Goat Island to Mangawhai surf beach is an enclosed area and anything that impacts on it anywhere, will impact on the whole area. When McCallum’s dredge from the five to15 metre depth mark, sand then slips in from the coast and dunes… Pakiri is being eroded away.”

MHRS base their findings on the scientific investigations of 1994s ‘Mangawhai-Pakiri Sand Study’, commissioned by AC and conducted over three years by National Institute for Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) as well as other qualified scientific departments. At an environmental court hearing in 2006 the study was the source of debate regarding the amount and flow of sand coming into the embayment, and despite strong opposition from experts and AC themselves, the judge’s ruling sided with MBL, allowing them to continue mining.

Covid causing de-lays
MBL maintain that ‘the sand budget’ is sustainable and ‘the independent expert evidence’ provided in the companies consent application shows effects of nearshore mining ‘to be less than minor or negligible’.

“The historical evidence provided in the Mangwhai-Pakiri Sand Study, Environment Court findings and our recent studies by independent experts, do not agree with the statement that Te Arai-Pakiri embayment is a closed system with no inputs of new sand.”

However Shayne Elstob did say MBL will also be applying for a consent to extract sand further offshore.

“Should this be granted to our satisfaction, we have been very open that we will surrender the nearshore application,” he says. “We were hoping to apply in the next month but with the current Covid situation we will likely be delayed and unfortunately we have no idea what that means as a timeframe.”
 

Few restrictions for sand mining Sand mining is actually banned from Mangawhai’s side of Te Arai coastline which is under Northland Regional Council management, but allowed in the Auckland domain. Although New Zealand is the only OECD country who allows nearshore sand mining, Ministry for the Environment state that at this stage there are no policies being developed at a national level for restrictions on sand mining: ‘All regional councils must give effect to the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS) in their regional coastal plans… and are responsible for coastal activities under the Resource Management Act 1991. In line with their regional coastal plan, they consult with their communities, decide where activities like sand mining occur and how they will be managed to avoid affecting sand dunes and other natural features’. MBL have been previously affiliated with Kaipara Ltd (KL) who are also in the process of applying for a renewal of their current permit which allows them to dredge sand in offshore waters along Te Arai-Pakiri’s coastline in depths of 25m and over. The two companies are separately owned and operated, however MBL is licensed to extract sand from KL’s current offshore consent, but say that is the only link between the two entities.