GUARDIANS OF PAUATAHANUI INLET

Oral submission on the

Porirua City Council Draft Annual Plan 2005-2006

Your Worship, Councillors.

The Guardians thank you for the opportunity to address you on this issue. I will be brief.

I asked to speak to our submission in order to emphasise our concern at the gap between Council’s continued statements extolling the natural beauty of Porirua and its seeming lack of will to recognize the urgency of the need for it to act to maintain that beauty.

For example: Research shows unequivocally that the most serious problem for the Harbour is the continuing input of preventable quantities of sediment. For some time this has been acknowledged by council officers and Councillors as being the most urgent issue. Thus we find it very difficult to understand why this Annual Plan does not support a small discretionary project directly targeted at this problem. Perhaps the incremental nature of the problem and fact that the sources of sediment are multiple and small is not appreciated. Every opportunity to deal with a source should be taken.

Porirua is an “amazing city” but a large portion of that amazingness can be attributed to its location surrounding its twin harbours. Just about every publication, report and publicity brochure produced by the Council emphasizes this point, usually through a stunning aerial photograph.

It is more than just interesting to note that almost every speaker at the recent Development Fora stressed the advantage to the city of its location – as a place to live, a place to work, a place in which to invest and as an asset of incalculable economic, social and cultural value.

It is our thesis that the Council can no longer have its cake and eat it. The Harbour (both the Pauatahanui Inlet and the Onepoto Arm) is in trouble and requires a commitment of cash and resources to implement a long term integrated programme of preventive and remedial action. Most of the research and analysis has been done and recommendations for action made – notably in the Pauatahanui Inlet Action Plan and Restoration Plan.

We acknowledge that a start to this was made in the initial LTCCP 2004-2014. We also accept that major new strategic initiatives will have to await the 2006 revision of the LTCCP. But we are disappointed, to say the least, that the opportunity has not been taken in the Draft Annual Plan 2005-2006 to address aspects of these urgent issues that can be dealt with through short term funding.

John Wells

Chairperson

Guardians of Pauatahanui Inlet

16 May 2005

Last updated: Monday, May 16, 2005