Council votes to restrict ash scattering
Families will need approval to scatter their loved ones’ ashes in public on the Kapiti Coast, after the district council voted to tighten control of the great hereafter.
Councillors voted by 6-5 on Thursday to include a clause in a new cemeteries bylaw, banning people from scattering ashes on beaches, rivers and parks.
The vote came despite staff saying the new bylaw would not be enforced – and that anywhere below the high-tide mark was out of the council’s control anyway.
Last month, the council said permitted scattering areas would be restricted to specific garden beds inside cemeteries. On Thursday, open spaces manager Nico Crous said staff were now identifying areas in and outside cemeteries where it would be allowed.
Staff revealed to councillors that the bylaw applied only on the landward side of the high-tide mark. Past that, the beach was in the hands of Greater Wellington Regional Council, and ashscattering would be out of Kapiti’s control.
Councillor Murray Bell said some of his colleagues appeared to have changed their opinion of the proposed bylaw after ‘‘bad publicity’’.
‘‘I do think we’re making this a lot bigger issue than it really is. We’ve heard that, if people want to put their ashes on a beach, they simply go ... below the high-tide mark.’’
Deputy mayor Mike Cardiff sought to have the ash clause cut out of the bylaw. He said there was no central government law stopping people from scattering ashes wherever they liked.
‘‘They should not be prevented from going and sprinkling ashes where they like. There are a number of walkways, there are seats on walkways, there are rose gar- dens, where people who have partners like using them, and sitting in them.’’
To prevent those people from ‘‘sprinkling a few ashes in these areas’’ was draconian, he said.
Council kaumatua Don Te Maipi said the spreading of ashes took on a spiritual element for Maori, making whole areas tapu.
There were many wild plants that were gathered and eaten by iwi members which could be covered by the ashes of the dead.
‘‘People wee on you, and if they put you on the pathway, they walk all over you.’’
A staff report to Thursday’s meeting of the regulatory management committee said the ashscattering clause was not actually a ban ‘‘but rather a means of lighthanded regulation of where this occurs’’.