Lower Oreti users plan to combat river woes
Brian Railton cannot walk on water.
But he can do a pretty good impression of it when he strides into the lower Oreti River near the Southland Powerboat Club.
Minutes earlier, just metres downstream, Aurora College students on a twin-hulled waka become stuck on one of the many sandbars that lie in wait for powerboaters, waka ama crews, rowers, kayakers, jetskiers and water skiers.
Siltation, sand and erosion problems had been increasingly degrading the river, progressively limiting its recreational use, creating shifting and sometimes hard-to-detect dangers for river users and drainage problems for property owners, Railton said.
The powerboat club president said if the problems weren’t addressed the river’s lower reaches would eventually, to all intents and purposes, be “just a midge pond’’.
The amount of material coming down the river, and the dynamics of water flow, had meant that just one large tree trunk that had become lodged for four or five months had led to the formation of five to seven sandbars downstream.
Sand banks could also shift pretty quickly and a power boat striking one where it hadn’t previously been, at 80kph, would come to a quick and dangerous stop, he said.
“We need to do some dredging ... the poor old Oreti, it’s on its knees.’’
But the response from the affected organisations was not to complain stridently to the regional council, Environment Southland.
They intended to revive the former Lower Oreti Recreational Management Group, which would fundraise, plan for, and pursue solutions while working co-operatively as “an allied force’’ with consent agencies.
Railton chaired the original group, which interrupted its activities when other civic projects such as the September 2010 collapse of Stadium Southland and Rugby Park’s financial and maintenance problems dominated the public agenda.
The group fell into abeyance and lost its accreditation as an incorporated society.
But when it was operational it had a constitution that gave it the capacity to “do the job’’ needed.
“We are going to use that constitution to restart another group,’’ he said.
Environment Southland confirmed it had been approached about the proposal and its catchment operations manager Randal Beal said before there were any solutions they would need to consider the natural processes of the river.
“The area is a natural deposition area,’’ Beal said. “So any work to clear silt or sand would need to be maintained.
“Any work within a waterway would also need to meet relevant rules and consent requirements.’’
Railton said the river users knew full well that there was work that local bodies such as Environment Southland could not do because it would be designated capital work which they then had an obligation to continue with. And “estuarine filtration is never stopping’’.
But a reformed management group would have fundraising options of its own, and could call on a wealth of research already done to help identify the best way for it to carry out the work needed to combat the degradation of what could again be a much greater asset to the community, he said.