Not their best work

The Kitchener St end of the old river bed, which no one admits owning, is clearly marked as a district council reserve. Photo / Peter Jackson

Morrie Barclay and Regan Jones must have thought once that if the Far North District Council wasn't responsible for the old river bed behind their homes in Matthews' Avenue and Kitchener St in Kaitaia then the Northland Regional Council would be. And if the worst came to the worst, the Earthquake Commission would come to their rescue as their properties slowly give away to gravity.

If so, they were wrong. All three have declared that it's not their problem. The councils say they don't own the river bed, and the EQC says the problem isn't a slip, so it isn't responsible either. Just who is legally bound to do something isn't clear. Jones, who has been looking for some sort of assistance from someone for four years, and Barclay certainly don't know. Barclay reckons his next port of call will be TVNZ's 'Fair Go.' That might well turn out to be his best bet.

It's fair enough that the councils, and the EQC, don't go looking for problems to fix. None of them are flush with cash, and they shouldn't be expected to whip out their cheque books if they are not bound to do so, despite, in the district council's case, Mayor John Carter recognising a compassionate element to Barclay's plight. He is not young, his eyesight is failing, and it won't be long before he has to sell. With the corner of his section slowly slipping into the riverbed, and with a veritable jungle on the other side of his boundary, he might well be wondering who is likely to buy it, and for how much.

You would have to expect that its value has fallen significantly since he bought it a couple of years ago, when there didn't seem to be a problem.

None of those three authorities are prepared to do anything, although the district council did helpfully advise Barclay how to navigate the EQC website. Cr Felicity Foy said council staff were too busy to pursue the issue with the EQC, which, in any event, has denied responsibility, on his behalf.

This little saga doesn't represent the best work of any of these organisations, one of which surely has to be responsible. Barclay certainly had a point when he suggested that if the district council owned his house, and he owned the old river bed, he would be expected to do something.

Regan Jones' position is more perilous than Barclay's. The back wall of his garage is now half as far from the edge of the river bank than it was a few years ago, and he has been moving fences for some time as they threatened to disappear. The edge of the bank is now only a few metres from his house, and if something isn't done within the not too distant future it will begin to sink.

Jones has long believed that it is a pipe that takes stormwater from Matthews' Ave to the old river bed that is causing the problem. He believes the pipe has broken, the major evidence of that being long-established cracks in concrete. If he's right, he could be forgiven for believing that the district council has to do something.

One assumes that the pipe, and the water it carries (or doesn't), are the council's, but no one appears to have acted on that possibility in the four years that he's been complaining.

There might be another clue regarding responsibility. In Kitchener St, on the other side of the river bed from Matthews' Ave, the district council has erected a sign declaring it to be a council reserve, and stating that rubbish is not to be dumped there. It seems odd that part of the river bed is a council reserve, and no one knows who owns the rest.

Part of the river bed was filled in years ago, by the Kaitaia Borough Council, to extend Kitchener St.

The Northland Age has only spoken to Barclay and Jones; other properties might also be affected, but even if there aren't more, someone needs to do something. The slumping is the more pressing issue, but the river bed itself is a weed-infested cesspit. It holds significant quantities of water after heavy rain, which Jones says slowly seeps into the Awanui River, but for much of the year retains a small quantity of stagnant water, which has to be an ideal habitat for mosquitoes and rats.

It is unsightly, no doubt unhealthy and definitely dangerous, and even if it doesn't meet the criteria for EQC involvement, it must be of concern to one or both of the councils. At the very least one of them could solve the mystery of who owns it so Jones and Barclay know exactly who to appeal to. Surely one of the councils could answer that question and start the wheels turning.

The district council might also like to explain where its Kitchener St reserve ends and the ownerless wilderness begins.

Priorities

It would be churlish not to be grateful for the cash the government has been flinging at the Far North over recent weeks. The timing might be suspect, given that the man who is making the announcements is hoping to win Northland in next month's election, and is widely regarded as his party's best hope of staying in Parliament, but by and large the money has gone to worthy projects that have been on various wish lists for a very long time.

Those wish lists include the sculpture Chris Booth plans to build outside Kerikeri, a collection of suspended rocks that will apparently tell those who see it how well they're doing in terms of countering climate change. It is not surprising, however, that critics reckon $550,000 could be better spent.

Jones was right, to a point, when he defended the grant, saying it would help pay wages for the contractors who would be involved, and that the money would filter into the community, at a time when every job has added value given the impact of Covid-19. No doubt many people will think it is money well spent, but it does raise the question of priorities.

It smacks a little of excessive enthusiasm to find something, anything, that will be visible and that will be connected, in the short-term at least, with government funding, without which it would likely never be built, or at least not for some time to come.

There are better candidates for government largesse, even a relatively paltry sum such as $550,000, however, albeit not offering quite the same instant gratification. Kerikeri Retirement Village CEO Hilary Sumpter, for example, asks in this issue of the Northland Age why it is that civic and political leaders are apparently comfortable with the fact that aged care provision in provincial centres is provided predominantly by "under-funded, under-resourced and hopelessly-stretched" charitable community organisations. Good question.

Half a million dollars might pay for a sculpture but would do little to avert the aged care disaster that Sumpter warns is coming our way. But it would be a start, and would at least demonstrate that the proper funding of aged care is on politicians' radar.

The creation of jobs should not necessarily be the sole criterion for the funding that has been announced for the Far North, or anywhere else, in that many of the projects have real additional value for the recipient communities, but works of art would not seem to have as great a claim as a genuine, increasingly pressing social calamity that no one seems to be showing any interest in whatsoever.

Given predictions that we ain't seen nothing yet in terms of Covid-19's economic impact, aged care is unlikely to take centre stage any time soon. If Hilary Sumpter is right we might all live to regret that.