Wanganui's port has a future. Not as a facility for commercial coastal trading operations but as a safe haven for recreational boaties.
Mayor Michael Laws holds that vision even as the ink of on the deal signed last week, between the council and local iwi, is still drying.
It's a vision that
As it stands now, Wanganui's silt-clogged port with its dilapidated and largely outdated facilities has no real future. Its hand-to-mouth existence for the past two decades meant the previous operators, Ocean Terminals, had only meager financial resources to plough back into such essential activities as dredging, to maintain adequate depths in the harbour basin, and maintaining even basic equipment for transferring cargoes.
And that situation has persisted under the more recent lessees, River City Port Ltd.
While Wanganui's port could gain from any upturn in the coastal shipping industry – a prospect that flows from the Government's view that coastal shipping is a viable transport alternative – realising that benefit that will take a long time and a lot of investment dollars.
Thus the mayor is right to suggest that we should, for the meantime, "think small" and focus in the shorter term on developing the port for recreational sailors. Wanganui's potential as a safe haven is heightened by the fact that there are no other suitable places between New Plymouth and Wellington, providing refuge for small boats on a coast prone to sudden, dramatic and savage changes in the weather and seas conditions.
However, even the think-small approach will require considerable investment and that, as Mr Laws says, will have to come from the private sector in partnership with the public sector.
At this stage how the vision for the port's future might be turned into reality is unclear and probably hasn't been put anywhere near a drawing board yet.
But this is one project where making haste slowly is a good option.
The port's new partners can afford to allow a lot more water to flow down the river, through the port and out to sea and still not miss the boat.
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