Meng Foon and illegal sea wall in boaties’ firing line

Concerned boatie Craig Miller (left) and commercial cray fisher Murray Dolman want the Gisborne District Council to take some action against former mayor Meng Foon who has constructed an unpermitted sea wall in front of his seaside camping business at Tatapouri. The boaties believe the wall has channelled a huge pile of sand on to the lower reaches of the nearby slipway, rendering it unusable when the tide is out. Picture by Liam Clayton

Boaties say former mayor Meng Foon’s illegal seawall at Tatapouri is to blame for an unusual pile-up of sand that’s marooning their vessels and vehicles at the end of the slipway.

Local boatie and former captain of the Gisborne Tatapouri Sports Fishing Club Craig Miller and commercial crayfisherman Murray Dolman have been regular users of the slipway for 45 years. They say the accumulation of sand over its lower reaches and in the channel beyond the boat ramp is the first they have ever seen.

It has rendered it impossible to get boats in and out of the water once the tide gets more than halfway out.

“We’re really concerned about the level of sand out here and how soft it is,” Mr Dolman said.

Just a few weeks back, it took two four-wheel-drive vehicles lined up in tandem to haul out a tractor and boat that had got stuck.

It was not only an inconvenience but a safety hazard, too, Mr Miller said.

The club has been using its Facebook page to warn members about the sand and concern is now also mounting as to how the problem will adversely affect the upcoming Bay Bonanza fishing event.

Access will also become a real problem for Mr Dolman when the crayfishing season starts up again next month.

The accumulation of sand is particularly evident on the eastern side of the slipway, where there used to be quite a drop off from the concrete to the sand on the beach beneath.Sand now also covers what used to be a wider expanse of concrete where the slipway entered the sea and which had previously provided an additional launching path.

Mr Miller says they just want to know what’s happening with the rogue seawall that they believe is channelling sand onto the slipway and causing driftwood debris to pile up beside it. He’s annoyed at  the council’s lack of action.

It seems the former mayor is getting special treatment from council officials, the pair say.

“We just need some action from council on the issue and what they’re going to do about Meng,” Mr Miller said.

“If it was me or Murray they (the council) would’ve made us pull that wall out and slapped us with a big fine and everything whereas because it’s Meng he’s allowed to get away with it.

“And this ramp is actually a council asset, too”, albeit the club was tasked with maintaining it under its lease agreement, Mr Miller said.

They are not opposed to the wall outright and say it could’ve been an asset if it had been properly designed and the potential impacts of it explored and avoided through a resource consent process that would normally apply.

They noted the council itself had needed to comply with the consent process for work it previously did either side of the slipway.

Mr Foon began constructing his wall — a stretch of upright steel fence posts supporting horizontal timber planks — in front of the Tatapouri Bay Oceanside Accommodation he and wife Ying own, on August 25.

He continued with the project for several weeks after being asked to stop on August 31.

The council issued him an abatement notice on October 6, but has done nothing further about the problem.

Mr Foon said the wall was necessary because of erosion from Cyclone Gabrielle and that it was important to protect two large Norfolk Pine trees at risk from being undermined by the increasingly high tides.

He claimed he’d undertaken the work after Gisborne District Council failed to respond to his request for post-cyclone funding (although the Council refuted this).

Mr Dolman and Mr Miller say Mr Foon was spoken to three times before Council finally issued the abatement notice and the only reason it was issued was because they kept complaining everytime they saw further work being done on the wall.

The pair believe the ultimate answer to Tatapouri’s erosion problems is for the Council to continue the rock wall it previously installed beside the Stingray centre. They say the rocks break up the force of the waves, rather than channelling them sideways as Mr Foon’s wall seems to do.