Artists lament their black drain river

When Hapimana Whakaruru looks at the river near where he was raised as a child, all he sees is "death".

That is one reason he and four other artists from Kawerau, in the eastern Bay of Plenty, are expressing their disgust at the state of the lower Tarawera River in an art exhibition opening tomorrow in Auckland.

While it was not news that the river, known as the "black drain" to Kawerau locals, was in a bad state, Mr Whakaruru said it could end up like the dying Lake Rotoiti in Rotorua if nothing was done now to fix the problem.

"Our river is dying, too. Its mauri [life force] is being destroyed," he said. "When we were kids we used to swim and fish in there, but we can't today."

For more than 50 years waste from the nearby pulp and paper mills, owned by Carter Holt Harvey, have been discharged into the river. Tighter laws and regulations have been introduced to limit the amount and nature of discharges which are at the center of an Environment Court hearing.

The "eco-justice" exhibition at Te Taumata Art Gallery will be opened by TV3 News presenter Carol Hirschfeld and Materoa Dodd, a senior lecturer at Waikato University and the author of a report on the river commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment.

"Te Waiora E" is the first art display to look at the state of the river and its impact on Ngati Awa and Tuwharetoa ki Kawerau, the two iwi living in the area.

All of the artists - the others are Rerehau Gordine, Aroha Ruha, Grace Voller and Waimarie Hunt - have tribal connections to those iwi.

Ms Dodd said her report, which calls for a commission of inquiry, had broken the silence of the cultural story of the river and its people.

"Both the people and the place have been displaced by the loss of the mauri of the river and its recomposition as a black drain of poison and pollutants," she said.



John McIntosh, a scientist at Environment Bay of Plenty, said the quality of the river was improving and the mills were making efforts to reduce the dark colour of effluent they discharged.