Ngai Tamawhariua hapu is kaitiaki for the project. BayTrust has provided $15,000 to fund the writing of the plan.
Three key focuses of Project Parore are to look after soils and water quality, natural areas and wildlife and the fresh and saltwater fishery. Locals living in the Te Mania catchment are critical to the project's success, which can be applied across the three other catchments — Te Rereatukahia, Uretara and Tahawai, once they get the Te Mania community engaged.
John said Te Mania catchment plan has a section around community engagement process within it. Members of the group met with Eurofins NZ, a laboratory testing business last week which has offered to do monitoring for them, which is one step in community engagement. In parallel the group has met with the main industry groups related to the land use in the catchment — Beef+Lamb, Dairy NZ, Zespri and NZ Avocado.
Te Mania Catchment is 13km2 and bounded by Hot Springs Rd on one side and Lund Rd on the other and includes much of Sharp Rd. It has 28km of streams and 17km of harbour margin. It has a mix of land use — a golf course, lifestyle blocks, residential housing, agriculture — sheep, beef, dairy, horticulture — avocado, kiwifruit, citrus, berries, forestry, apiarists, a timber treatment plant, a coolstore, a pistol club and a cemetery.
The group is meeting on Tuesday, October 30 at 5.30pm at the Fairview Golf and Country Club so people in the catchment and any other catchments can get involved. Project Parore's vision and objectives, work already underway and issues impacting the catchment are some aspects that will be shared at the meeting.
Project Parore has a water monitoring plan. Lawrie said up until now nobody has done any monitoring.
"There are people using, for example, copper spray and other chemicals on their orchards. We want to know whether they are having an affect on the stream or not. Then we can work back from there. We're looking for cause and effect and how we fix it, rather than blame.
"Water quality monitoring has already been carried out at six sites at Te Rereatukahia and Te Mania from the bottom end by the bridge, which is not looking that flash, but we will find out more when we next monitor," Lawrie said.
Rick believes when you present landowners with actual data, it's a light bulb moment for many of them.
"Farmers want to be good custodians of the land."
Why the name Project Parore?
Back in the 60s and 70s there was an abundance of parore in Tauranga Harbour. Now when you set a net it gets taken away by sea lettuce. John said the parore fish is a herbivore, but the sedimentation entering the harbour has destroyed its habitat.
"The key success indicator to the project would be that the parore would return.
"The project is looking 50 years out and is part of the reason we have done the plan so its documented and will be properly resourced." Project Parore is a marathon, not a sprint, said Rick Burke.
"But landowners need to sprint the first part around what the issues are and getting their environmental farm plans done."
Anyone in the catchments is welcome to come to Tuesday's meeting at the Fairview Golf and Country Club at 5.30pm.
