Otara Lake is in a sorry state, with unacceptable levels of pollution leaving a foul taste in many residents' mouths. Rebecca Blithe investigates.
A rush of wind generated by trucks hurtling past whips at the toetoe protruding over the concrete bridge.
Four-year-old Kelly is hoisted high onto his grandfather's shoulders for a better look upstream at the putrid Otara lake his elder holds so dear.
"I'm not happy," says veteran lake crusader Jim Sinclair. He uses his index finger like a pen to underline the words "long-term plan" on a placard detailing the local board's plans for the lake.
Fellow Otara Lake community liaison committee member Jo Iosefo, who has lived near the lake for almost 40 years, says watching its demise has been upsetting. "There's a bridge going over to where I live and I'd come down every morning and you could see the fish swimming. You don't see that now, which is sad, really sad.
"The creek is full of stolen road cones and signs. They got 42 shopping trollies out of there," he says, pulling a battered orange cone from a flax bush.
Since the Electricity Department built a weir to separate the creek from the estuary in the 1960s, the lake has been touted as a potential "aquatic paradise". But it seems more than ever to be paradise lost as Otara-Papatoetoe local board requests a $25,000 report to determine the state of the lake since the Flat Bush development.
In March of last year, the then-Manukau City Council resolved to compile a "detailed investigation on the adverse effects, including the quantity and quality of sediment water in Otara Lake generated from the development of the Flat Bush catchment as part of the Flat Bush stage 2 re-zoning".
But local board chair, John McCracken, is disappointed in council efforts to date. "Council have been pretty slack. The [Flat Bush] development has been more of a postponing. With the development, often there's sediment from earthworks. They say they're not going to do something till after the development.
"It's been a stalling technique."
He says ownership has also been an issue and a deal made in 1994 to remedy the lake has amounted to little. "It's a bit of a loaded question but no one wants to take responsibility. There's been an accord between the power company, the MCC and ARC, but that's just a piece of paper."
Manager of Infrastructure and Environmental Services at Auckland Council, John Dragicevich, says Auckland Council does not own the lake either and that no timeline has been set for tabling the report on the condition of the waterway.
Asked how much funding had been allocated in the past for remedying the lake's polluted state, he says, "Funding was, in the past, provided for the Otara Lake Working Party which developed the Otara Lake Action Plan and Accord (1994) and implementation of measures outlined in the Action Plan including education, cleanups, floating litter booms, stormwater and sediment quality improvements."
What's in the water?
The lake has been fenced off because of its high content of pollutants including lead, zinc and sediment.
Sold down the river
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