TAUPO - After five years and a huge financial outlay, Ross and Norma Stevenson have finally stopped the upper Waikato River eroding their land at Taupo.
The Stevensons decided to build a timber retaining wall to stop the back yard of their 6ha property being eaten away by fluctuating water levels
at the mouth of the river.
Since Mr Stevenson started recording the erosion seven years ago, a 40m section along the riverbank has been eroded by 8m to 15m.
The couple applied for resource consent to build the retaining wall but came up against the local iwi, Ngati Rauhoto, which objected to their using treated timber.
The Ngati Rauhoto Land Rights Committee and kaumatua claimed that the use of tanalised timber, treated with copper chrome arsenate, would introduce poisons to the river.
In 1997 the regional council, Environment Waikato, approved the Stevensons' application on the basis that the amount of arsenic leaked into the river from soil erosion would be far more than the amount from treated timber.
But that did not mean plain sailing for the project. The couple had to watch helplessly for another two years as the river continued to lap away at their land.
They needed dry weather and had to wait for ECNZ, the power company that operated control gates near their property, to lower river levels before construction could begin.
Mr Stevenson said he and his wife had no idea that the building of the wall, which took only 24 days to put up, would dominate their lives for five years.
"In the end we took on a battle on behalf of the New Zealand forestry industry. "It was left up to us to find scientific evidence regarding the impact of treated timber on waterways, but we did it because of the huge implications it could have on our forestry if the use of the timber was banned." Mr Stevenson said he was relieved the wall was now in place and their land secure, but disappointed that they had faced such a task.
"Maybe we were a bit naive in thinking we had the right to put poles in our own land.
"But this huge burden shouldn't have fallen on us. It's an issue that environmental agencies should carefully consider."
