Sealing Pouto Rd Northland's largest sealing project for a decade

Getting to Pouto Lighthouse, at the entrance to the Kaipara Harbour, will be easier once a $8 million sealing project is completed on Pouto Rd - the largest sealing project in Northland for a decade

The largest single road sealing project for a decade in Northland - 21km of Pouto Rd - begins next month.

The job is expected to cost $8 million, with the money coming from the Government's Provincial Growth Fund.

"It's Northland's most significant road sealing projects since Cape Reinga," Jim Sephton, Kaipara District Council general manager infrastructure, said.

The final 21km of Pouto Rd will be sealed and widened over the next 19 months, with work due to be completed by April 2022.

The last 19km of State Highway 1 to Cape Reinga was finally sealed in 2011, dramatically boosting tourist access to the iconic top of New Zealand and ensuring SH1 was sealed all the way from Bluff to the top of the country.

"Pouto Rd is one of the great anchors of Kaipara, it's a sea anchor for Kaipara District," KDC Mayor Dr Jason Smith said.

Sephton said the Pouto seal will transform access locally, regionally and from further afield to and from the remote tip of North Kaipara Head that juts into New Zealand's biggest estuarine harbour.

The sealing links in with KDC's $5m Kaipara Harbour Wharves (KHW). It focuses on building tourism through linking historical wharves in maritime-based Otago-rail-trail-style low impact travel across the harbour.

It includes a new $1.8m wharf to be built at tiny Pouto settlement - at road's end on the shores of the 950sq km harbour. This settlement has just 16 houses and a marae.

KHW focuses on building maritime-based Otago-rail-trail-style low impact tourism across the harbour and its shores.

"I'm really looking forward to the benefits we will get down there and the impact on tourism up and down the west coast," KDC councillor David Wills said.

He said the sealing and wharf would benefit wider Northland tourism by creating a new tourist loop linking through to Auckland and its 1.5 million people.

The sealing will be done in two stages. The first $5.05m section adds 10km on to the southern end of the roughly 39km of already-sealed Dargaville to Pouto road. Major pending local forestry harvesting has driven the need for this.

Work's expected to start on the second stage about September next year, completion by April 2022. This will seal the fate of the final 11km of the Dargaville to Pouto road's 60km.

KDC's Greenhill/Maungaru quarry at Te Kopuru on Pouto Peninsula is to be reopened to provide more than 96,000cu m of gravel for the sealing.

KDC is working with Ripia marae (Te Uri o Hau) to look at how Maungaru quarry will be rehabilitated through things like planting and reserve development once its gravel for the project is removed.

Local iwi are already involved in Pouto Point tourism. Waikaretu marae (Te Uri o Hau), already hosts 1000 cyclists in the biennial Tour Aotearoa event. The cyclists travel through tiny Pouto settlement, continuing south by boat across Kaipara Harbour to Auckland and beyond.

It also hosts the Pouto lighthouse challenge, where competitors staying at the marae bike, run and walk to the lighthouse. This was built out of kauri in 1844 and is New Zealand's oldest wooden lighthouse.

The Pouto projects are all PGF funded.