Boaties berate NRC over lost piles

Parua Bay boaties are fuming after a 50-year-old structure used to maintain and repair their vessels was chopped down without any consultation.
The four wooden grid poles located at the Nook at Parua Bay had been utilised free-of-charge by boaties to maintain their vessels at low tide since about 1952.
However, Whangarei district resident John Dyer removed them on Wednesday after being told he could do so by the Northland Regional Council. The Northern Advocate understands he will use them to adorn his garden.
Mr Dyer said he had asked the NRC if he could remove some poles at Onerahi but they had instead told him the Parua Bay poles could be taken away.
The boaties will now have to pay hundreds of dollars to maintain their vessels at a Whangarei haul-out area.
"We are hopping mad," Parua Bay boatie Greg Hayes said. "The poles were a place where you could lay your boat against when the tide went out and check the boat for any damage underneath. Boaties could come across to the only sheltered bay in the harbour on a nice day and check their boats out."
The local boaties are angry the NRC allowed the work to proceed without first consulting them.
"They were a traditional part of the Whangarei boating scene for as long as I can remember," Mr Hayes said.
"It was such a handy facility for everyone to use. Now it's gone in the sweep of a pen and the slash of a chainsaw. It means the freedom to have cheap boating is being eroded further through the high-handedness of local authorities. It's immoral and selfish to make the decision without any consultation."
NRC coastal consent team leader Allan Richards confirmed locals had not been consulted but said efforts to get locals in the area to take responsibility for the poles in the past had failed. The boaties deny ever being asked.
The NRC preferred for the boaties who maintained and repaired their boats at the Nook to now do so on proper haul-out facilities in Whangarei which were NRC compliant and had waste catching facilities attached, Mr Richards said.
All structures in the coastal marine area were required to have resource consent and the grid piles did not, he said.
"If the local boaties feel so strongly about having such a facility they can make an application to have one."
Whangarei Cruising Club president John Gentry said the cost of using the Whangarei haul-out facilities would be at least $200 a time. "Now there's nowhere in the Whangarei Harbour, other than the Cruising Club grid which has been closed down for cleaning boats, that the poor-man boatie can park their boat against and change their prop and check blockages. It wasn't used greatly, maybe about 20 times a year, but it was an asset to local boaties."
Mr Dyer, who is also a boatie, said it took him seven hours to remove the piles.
"When I finished three locals came down and they were pretty irate," he said.
The hardwood piles were about eight metres high.