‘I thought I had stuffed my tyres’

The state of our roads at present is appalling. At Mahinepua we have a gravel road of 900 metres, which local residents have been trying to get sealed for the past 20 years or so.

The rates the council is now pulling out of here have escalated phenomenally, but nothing has been done and, apparently, we are a long way down on the list.

We have to ring frequently as the corrugation and lack of metal, also the amount of traffic using the beach and the DoC walk along the Mahinepua peninsula, has increased amazingly.

Unfortunately, when the metal has been put down, it is not rolled or bedded in so goes straight to the side. The grader comes on the odd occasion when we have complained to the council about the dangerous state of the road. It would be really great if we had road contractors that did the job properly, instead of patching up. We also have a dangerous hole coming in from State Highway 10 on the Matauri Bay road on a bend, especially if have to go to the left with logging trucks or drivers who are cutting corners. I thought I had stuffed my tyres completely. It would be a breath of fresh air if someone took responsibility and fixed the roads properly.

Vickie Corbin Mahinepua, Kaeo

Here’s an idea (or three)

Suggestion 1: The 10,000 vehicle owners daily inconvenienced by having to incur a detour of several kilometres via Waipapa during the day for three weeks, invoice the council for the extra fuel used.

Suggestion 2: The business owners in Kerikeri invoice the council for compensation for the loss of trade during this time.

Suggestion 3: The council carries out the work at night thereby minimising the inconvenience and costs to the ratepayers and putting people first just for once. Their livelihoods are being put under threat again after a torrid couple of years through the insensitive stupidity of the council. Is it any wonder that, once again, the general opinion of it is scraping the bottom of the barrel?

There is still time to have the humility to change the work to overnight; not rocket science.

Chris Penny

Northland

Passing (in the) wind

So I got it a bit wrong saying grasslands are a great carbon sink. But trees are not blameless either or how come there is a great cloud of methane above the Amazon forest? And before you go off on a tangent, it is not from pools of stagnant water beneath said trees. By the way, the greatest oxygen producer is the ocean and the single-celled plants therein.

I now put out a challenge to all of you who think the NZ dairy cow is the worst methane producer on the planet. There are about 4 million dairy cows in NZ at this time and well over 5 million humans. I have read somewhere that, as the average human farts 16 times a day, that is as much if not more, methane produced by NZ humans as NZ dairy cows. So when you protest humans give up farting I will ask my cows to give up belching. And finally, if you want to talk about aerial pollution, look at the skies above any modern city and the skies above any farm paddock and ask yourself who