Wheel-spinning vandals target Napier's Marine Parade

The tracks cut by vehicles on the Marine Parade foreshore grass reserve. Photo / Ian Cooper

The dearth of rain in Napier this year may have saved ratepayers hundreds or thousands of dollars in repairs to damage from burn-outs on the Marine Parade foreshore reserve.

Occasional incidents culminated in an all-out binge of wheel-spins, braking and slides late last week, leaving a spaghetti-maze of vehicle tracks over at least 500m of rock-hard ground which had had a small amount of rain on Friday night.

Stretching from near the freedom campers' van park at the southern end to near Bayskate (once the site of Marineland), the damage is mainly superficial and is expected to repair itself.

Despite the massive amount of ground covered by the vandals, police say they received no reports of it on Friday night or early Saturday morning.

Napier City Council team leader parks, reserves, sportsgrounds Debra Stewart said: "We do get this type of activity in this area from time to time and it is always disappointing to see. Fortunately the grass cover in the area does seem to recover quickly."

She said such activity should be reported to the police to enable them to "undertake the necessary follow up".

There is little in place to block vehicle access to the reserve, and Stewart says that people who want to drive on to the grass will find ways.

"Council have a mix of barriers and planting along this stretch but there are still areas where determined and not so determined vehicles can get through," she said.