Fencing barrier newly erected at the Kissing Point landing spot for Ōkara marina dredging - complete with trucks crossing signage. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Fencing barrier newly erected at the Kissing Point landing spot for Ōkara marina dredging - complete with trucks crossing signage. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Negotiating more than 18,000 truck trips crossing Whangārei’s busy Riverside Drive at Kissing Point over the next year will be the price motorists pay for Northland’s newest marina development.
Up to 20,000 vehicles travel the two-lane Riverside Drive route into and out of Whangārei daily, and that number is steadily increasing.
The truck trips, which are about to start, will be carrying dredged upper Whangārei Harbour seafloor from next to Te Matau a Pohe bascule lifting bridge over the Hātea River, where the new $20 million Ōkara marina is being built.
Marina dredging is expected to take a year.
Thousands of truck trips will be crossing Riverside Drive as salty dredged seafloor is transported to its dumping site. Photo / Susan Botting
Developer Whangārei Harbour Marina Management Trust (WHMMT) has Northland Regional Council (NRC) consent to dredge as much as 150,000 cu m of seabed sediment to build the 115-berth marina.
Whangārei Marina assistant manager Sharron Beck, who works for WHMMT and is playing a key part in the development, said in May 130,000 cu m of the seabed would be dug up for the marina.
The 18,500 truck trips will be from the harbour’s edge to Whangārei District Council (WDC)’s Bell Block dredging dumping site.
Dredging the full consented quantity would increase the number of those trips. They would double to 37,000 for 130,000 cu m, or 42,800 for 150,000 cu m, when adding empty return trips back across Riverside Drive to the harbour’s edge.
A source involved with the marina build said each truckload carried about seven cu m of dredgings. Local Democracy Reporting Northland has been unable to find out how many trucks will be operating.
Transferring truckloads of Whangārei Harbour channel, Town Basin and other dredgings across Riverside Drive to Bell Block has been ongoing for a number of years – as the number of vehicles using the road also steadily climbs.
The truckloads result in a slurry from the salty wet dredgings steadily leaking onto Riverside Drive during the crossings, and this trail clearly visible on the road.
Daily Whangārei Heads and Onerahi commuters travelling to and from work in Whangārei along Riverside Drive, will potentially be crossing the Ōkara salty slurry trail 500 times a year.
The marina development truck trips will also be crossing WDC’s Onerahi shared path which runs along the seaward edge of Riverside Drive, between the truck crossings’ start and finish points.
WDC’s website says its shared paths provide “a safe, road-separated option for recreational and commuter cycling and walking with the path being shared between cyclists, pedestrians and mobility scooters”.
Ōkara marina is to be built on the seaward side of Te Matau a Pohe. Dredgings will be barged along the roughly half-kilometre stretch of Hātea River between there and Kissing Point in an about 20-minute trip. They will then be transferred by digger to a concrete holding pit on the sea’s edge. The material is then in turn transferred by digger for the by-truck journey to the dredging dump site across the road. The short journey takes less than 10 minutes.
Beck said in May the truck trips would be happening outside traffic rush hour, with some evening trucking potentially included as a result.
Barges, tug and diggers - part of getting dredged Whangārei Harbour seafloor to WDC's Bell Block dredging dumping site across Riverside Drive. Photo / Susan Botting
She also said in May that a traffic management plan for the crossings would be in place.
WHMMT chairman Noel Douglas would not comment this week on Riverside Drive truck crossing specifics when questioned by Local Democracy Reporting Northland. These questions were around traffic management plans, truck working hours, the salty dredging slurry trail across Riverside Drive, the shared path and who the contractors involved were.
He said all dredging and construction work would adhere to NRC and WDC resource consent conditions.
Douglas would not confirm the contracted companies involved, other than to say all were “well-known Northland businesses”.
He said the marina site preparation work was under way.
Northland Transportation Alliance (NTA) strategy and planning manager Jeff Devine said staff had met prospective dredging contractors to discuss proposed work activities.
Devine said all marina work in the transport corridor required a traffic management plan. An application for this had not yet been received from WHMMT or its contractors.
He said any potential conflict between motorists/shared path users and the trucks, their hours of work and the trucks’ slurry trail would all be considered as part of WDC marina consent requirements.
Measures to avoid tracking material via vehicle movements onto the road would be part of the required marina construction management plan. This would need to be supported by a corridor access request. Dust nuisance minimisation was another consideration with this.
■ Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
