Opinion: Restoration of critical waterway an important mission

Waikanae Ki Uta Ki Tai (From the Mountains to the Sea) is a holistic approach to the restoration of the Waikanae River.

Weekly column by Kāpiti Mayor K. Gurunathan.

Last Friday a partnership of local iwi and three government agencies released a document proposing a unique approach for the revitalisation of the Waikanae River.

Waikanae Ki Uta Ki Tai (From the Mountains to the Sea) is a holistic approach to the restoration of this critical waterway. The waterway that supplies water to 40,000 Kāpiti residents and businesses in the urban centre of the district. Serving the communities of Waikanae, Paraparaumu and Raumati.

Mana whenua Te Atiawa Ki Whakarongotai has been shaping its traditional relationship with the river for the past five years. Three years ago, with the support of DoC, the regional council, and KCDC, the initial approach was taken to community stakeholder groups for a wider discussion.

The first stakeholders hui saw the then Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage, challenge participants to have the stamina to undertake the long journey to understanding their relationship with the river. The values-based approach aims to encourage a community working together in partnership to enhance the life force of the river that supports the biodiversity and the communities and businesses dependent on it. And through this, increase the capacity of the river to support our communities.

The understanding of the river is basically threefold. Firstly, the experience of the river as a flowing visible phenomenon from the mountains to the sea. Secondly, there is the hidden river in the form of underground flows. Some of these percolating into shallow and deep aquifers. These aquifers can hold water as old as 400 years. Thirdly, there is the additional understanding of the water from the river extracted by pumps directed to treatment plants and fed through reticulation pipes to residential homes and businesses. Wastewater and stormwater systems then direct the used water back into the river.

What this holistic approach reveals is captured by the Māori proverb Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au, which means I am the river, the river is me. When you consider the fact that the water from the river is used for drinking and cooking, you can understand the concept of the river flowing through us.

This understanding of the river is a complex relationship of ourselves as individuals, families and communities with the river for our sustenance, recreation, its biodiversity, bush and landforms, and the understanding that the destruction of the bush in the catchment, pollutants from our stormwater and wastewater system not only poisons the life force of the river it directly poisons us.

Unbridled growth can also lead to overtaxing the capacity of the river. It's interesting to note that the council has been consulting on our growth strategy. Any growth strategy has to be underpinned by the capacity of our natural environment to support this growth. The other important factor to consider is the understanding of our relationship with the river as the source of our sustainable life and the Māori concept of "I am the river, the river is me", and how this will be affected by the Government's Three Waters reform.

If our communities are entrenched into this sustainable, holistic and even spiritual relationship with the river, how can this relationship survive the alienation of our "assets" to an amalgamated entity where we don't have an "ownership" of the river and the river does not have an "ownership" over us.

The danger the Three Waters reform poses to the holistic and organic approach proposed by the Waikanae Ki Uta Ki Tai vision is the potential alienation of this intimate environmental relationship because the levers of management will be taken out of the hands of local communities.

We need to look at ways to navigate through this potential danger to the unique vision proposed by this partnership between our communities, government agencies and mana whenua.

When the then Minister of Conservation challenged us to have the stamina and fortitude for the long journey, there was no navigation chart. As a community we need to chart our own.