Oliver Stone, aged 11 years, from Wellington, died on January 25 after playing in forestry waste on Waikanae Beach in Gisborne. Photo / Supplied
Oliver Stone, aged 11 years, from Wellington, died on January 25 after playing in forestry waste on Waikanae Beach in Gisborne. Photo / Supplied
EDITORIAL:
Norman Gracie doesn’t mince words when talking about the piles of wood where his young grandson lost his life while playing on an East Coast beach.
“People should just clean the beach up, rather than worry about whose responsibility it was.”
Oliver Shone, 11, was doing the sortof thing many Kiwi kids do - in his case, running around and playing on logs that were washing up on the Gisborne foreshore at Waikanae Beach. One moment he was climbing on a log, the next he fell, sustaining a fatal head injury.
This was no isolated lump of driftwood, however. Oliver was playing in a massive accumulation of forestry “slash”: the wood that is shorn off logs, or entire trees that are torn up and shunted aside during logging.
The unwanted wood is abandoned around felled forests and might remain where it is. However, heavy rains flush the debris down from hills into engorged waterways, ending up on coastlines such as the otherwise picture-postcard beaches of Tairāwhiti.
Members of the public rushed to assist the injured boy at Waikanae Beach. Photo / Chanelle Louise Rogers, File
A coroner will rule on why Oliver died, and the kinds of people we look to for answers are suggesting it’s better to wait for that ruling. However, we already know enough after seeing the incredible footage of the wood stacks piled against bridges as well as inundating gullies and roads. That pollution should never have been allowed to happen. And when it did, all parties responsible should have been hauled in to deal with it.
Gisborne mayor Rehette Stoltz says the forestry slash is a “complex situation” needing support from the Tairāwhiti territorial authorities as well as central government to make “the kind of transformational change that’s needed”. Her council has been working on managing the debris since 2022 after being hit by six severe weather events in 18 months.
The council raised monitoring, enforcement, and resourcing from 2018 onwards, she points out, as well as strengthening consent requirements and successfully prosecuting five forestry companies. The companies admitted unlawfully discharging contaminants - sediment and waste wood - into waterways or on to land where it could reach water, and the penalties ranged between $124,700 and $379,500.
The Gisborne Herald reported that Judge Brian Dwyer remarked on the need for fines to be a deterrent and “more than just the cost of doing business”. But the judge also criticised the council’s failure to properly monitor harvesting operations as “disgraceful”.
There is blame on more than one head here.
Prevention may finally be coming in the form of laws that recognise the gravity of this sort of environmental vandalism.
If passed, a Natural and Built Environment Bill before Parliament will increase fines for environmental offences by individuals from $300,000 to $1 million and raise fines for companies from $600,000 to $10 million. Powers of environmental enforcement agencies such as regional councils will also increase, and so too the scope of orders courts could make against such offenders. There will be additional fines of up to $10,000 for each day or part-day that offending continues, and insurance cannot be used to pay fines.
Logs piled up for export at Eastland Port in Gisborne. Photo / Grant Bradley, File
Nearly 10,000 people have also signed a petition calling for an independent inquiry into land use in Tairāwhiti.
Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti, a group of residents responsible for raising the petition, are concerned industry advocates might blunt the outcome by instead supporting a “review of regional resilience”.
Along with dozens of supporters, the petitioners have told the Gisborne District Council that an independent public Inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2013 is the type of investigation the petition expects.
Mayor Stoltz says analysis of the woody debris disgorged on to the coast during last month’s ex-tropical Cyclone Hale is being completed and any companies in breach will be prosecuted.
Absolutely, go after the culprits with a big stick. But all parties need to be on notice now, even as Cyclone Gabrielle is due to pound the country yet again this week.
Norman Gracie has buried a grandson. Clean the beaches up.
