KEY POINTS:
Environment Waikato is being criticised for failing to properly erect a warning sign at a dangerous spot on the Waihou River where an Auckland kayaker drowned this month.
Dale Frankum, 68, unwittingly kayaked into the spot at Okoroire, near Putaruru, where the river turns a sharp bend, narrows from about 10m to 1m, and drops into a "rock sieve", then exits in powerful rapids.
Police said a sign beside the river warning of the danger had been removed, possibly deliberately.
It was later found tucked under a bridge further down the river.
But Hugh Rhodes, manager of the Okoroire Hot Springs Hotel and owner of the land where the sign was erected, said vandals had not removed the sign.
"The only vandalism that's been done is by a cow," he said yesterday.
Mr Rhodes said the sign was one of two erected on posts in a paddock next to the river and was likely carried downstream in a flood.
He said he had warned Environment Waikato to raise the signs, saying floods and cattle would destroy them and it would be better to replace a "stop" sign that had initially hung from a cable across the river.
The council ignored his advice when they erected the signs about two years ago.
"They put those signs flush with the ground. They were just flattened."
Since Mr Frankum drowned on October 11, Environment Waikato has erected a temporary sign on a new post on the riverbank.
Council staff visited the site yesterday. A spokesman said a permanent sign would soon be erected and a new sign hung on a wire above the river.
Navigation safety programme manager David Pearks said Environment Waikato checked the signs annually and Mr Rhodes and kayakers had been asked in the past to let the council know if they disappeared.
"We are quite happy to replace them but if we don't know, we can't do anything," Mr Pearks said.
The sign above the river would replace one that disappeared, he said. Mr Rhodes, who said there had been no such sign for several years, said: "If it was done right the first time, that man would still be alive."
Frankum's kayaking companion, Garry McCarthy, who survived the drop and avoided drowning, said it was like "coming down a motorway that has got an obscured u-turn".
