Protesters block work on Cable Bay bridge

A 24-hour vigil to stop construction of a footbridge between Cable Bay and a $50 million luxury development is entering its seventh day today.
Up to 30 people, including members of a local hapu, have kept up a protest on the Far North beach since last Tuesday, blocking work on the controversial bridge. If completed, it would span State Highway 10 and link the beach with a condominium on a nearby hillside.
With practical options running out, members of the Doubtless Bay community have been resorting to direct but peaceful action.
A cross-section of locals have also been manning a tin-roofed structure erected by objectors on the site where a 12-metre pile is to be sunk for the footbridge.
Objectors say the bridge will be an eyesore on a picturesque and popular beach. They are angry at the Far North District Council for granting consent to the footbridge early in 2003 without public notification or iwi or public consultation.
The council says all legal processes were followed. It maintains that more than 90 percent of resource consents are not publicly notified and the bridge application met the requirements of the Resource Management Act.
Council chief executive Clive Manley also says an assessment of the bridge's environmental impacts accompanied the consent application, and no areas were identified of such significance as to need further public consultation.
He believes the only way that community concerns about the bridge can be addressed now is for objectors to seek a High Court review - but says any such application is unlikely to succeed.
A public meeting of about 70 people in Mangonui last week decided to continue the sit-in that had stopped a 25-tonne digger moving on to the beach. Objectors are taking turns to keep up the vigil.
Other moves involve preparing for a judicial review of the council's actions, and urging Northland MPs to get involved.
A Northland Regional Council consent, allowing subcontractor GHK Piling to access the beach foreshore with the digger and construction equipment to undertake work on piles for the bridge on weekdays only, expires on November 25.
The meeting was told that if work was not started or finished by November 25, another consent would have to be sought, taking up to three months.