“Enough is enough,” says Niria Wainui-Teepa after being regularly woken up by idling trucks in the middle of the night.
He is one of the 155 members of the rural Whatatutu Mangatū community, about 45km from Gisborne, who signed a petition presented to Gisborne District Council this week calling for action on the noisy, night-time trucks and damage to the roads.
“No way do our grandkids not get to sleep,” said Wainui-Teepa, trustee and chairman of Te Wainui Marae Charitable Trust.
The petition notes noise disturbances from 1.30am, speeding trucks and damage to provincial roads, including potholes.
It suggests a ban on engine/exhaust brakes when approaching the township and a ban on idling of heavy vehicles in the residential area, and calls for urgent road maintenance.
“These trucks idle loudly, some on high rev, and frequently use exhaust brakes, particularly when approaching the Puha Settlement Rd descending into Whatatutu to the Mangatū Rd descending to the Mangatū bridge,” the petition says.
Gisborne District Council said it had received the community’s requests and was “working through” the concerns raised.
“We’ll engage residents on how we can respond to the issues before we respond through the media,” a council spokesperson said.
Resident Corrie Brooking said the issues had been going on for decades.
She, Wainui-Teepa and other members of the community went door-knocking to get the 155 signatures on the petition, she said.
“All the logging traffic coming out of our forestry has to come in and out of our little town,” Brooking said.
The petition refers to the Whatatutu township as “a high-use industrial corridor for logging, metal and stock trucks”, with heavy vehicles passing through daily.
The quiet residential road, from the Puha bridge to the Mangatū bridge, is “being treated like a highway, without the infrastructure, safety measures or consent of the community to support such traffic”, the petition says.
“We’re left with the deep potholes to deal with... it’s just neglect... out of sight, out of mind,” Brooking said.
“Many residents have had the rims of their cars damaged and tyres replaced.”
The heavy vehicle noise happened throughout the night and all day, disrupting school children, the elderly and shift workers, she said.
The community also wants the council to conduct a safety audit with community consultation to ensure the pedestrian infrastructure “is safe and compliant to repurpose the footpaths with the township”, according to the petition.
“We have children going to school and trucks speeding... you’ve got parents dropping off their kids and trucks moving in both directions,” Brooking said.
A chain-checking layby zone for heavy vehicles was another solution presented in the petition.
“So that they can check chains and slow down peacefully and quietly through our town,” Brooking said.
The residents also want to be provided with an accurate engineering report on the stability of the Mangatū bridge.
A resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said the truck issues had been getting worse and taking part in the petition felt great.
“It feels like we have a say in our area that we live in on a 24-hour basis. They just use it. We live here,” they said.
Because they lived rurally and farmers got up early, there was only a small window of opportunity for them to get good sleep.
The truck issues present a “whole blister of sores,” they said.
The petition extended an invitation to the council to meet with representatives of Ngā Ariki Kaipūtahi to discuss their concerns for the environment.
“We expect our voices to be heard, our concerns to be addressed and our rights as residents, ratepayers and mana whenua to be upheld,” says the petition.