Residents, DoC fight marina extension

By TONY GEE

KERIKERI - Residents and the Department of Conservation will go to court to challenge the approval of a 78-berth extension to the Doves Bay marina in Kerikeri Inlet.

The plan by the Kerikeri Cruising Club to extend the 108-berth marina has provoked solid opposition from a society of residents that claims a membership of about 50 households.

Both the society and department are challenging in the Environment Court a joint decision made in September by the Northland Regional and Far North District Councils.

This allows the club and its associated company, Kerikeri Cruising Marina, to build more berths, dredge the foreshore and seabed, construct a haul-out area and reclaim 3200 sq m, subject to conditions.

The department says the reclamation is unnecessary and inappropriate and will offer little public benefit, but the cruising club points out that the area has been zoned to allow marinas and moorings since 1989.

The Doves Bay Society, formed some time ago to monitor the local environment and lobby for it, fears the coastline is being compromised by increasing demands for berthing and mooring boats in Doves and Opito Bays.

Society secretary and cruising club member Vivien Davy believes a throng of berthed boats and yachts will create more pollution in the tiny, picturesque bays.

She and other society members are especially concerned that the club and marina company are appealing against consent conditions that restrict boat work in the haul-out area and require a third of the reclamation to be landscaped.

Society chairman Andrew Tuke, also a club member, says the present low-impact, boutique-type marina "fits nicely into the sheltered part of the bay."

But the extension would protrude from the headland protected by a rock wall and create a large-scale facility.

In its appeal against the extension, the department notes that about 8500 cu m of material will be dredged from the foreshore and seabed.

It is asking the court to recommend to the Minister of Conservation that the application for a restricted coastal activity be rejected.

Bob Upperton, the marina company chairman, says the area was zoned for marina development when the Bay of Islands district plan was issued in 1989 and no one has objected.

Water-quality sampling and monitoring is being independently done by the Northland council, he says.

Residents were invited to public meetings and a local who acted as a spokesperson was also kept informed of developments.