Dialogue: Costs soar, lake dies while carping bureaucrats dither

By TONY GEE

Bureaucracy and procrastination generally go hand in hand.

Throw in lengthy adherence to various due processes which may or may not be required, then mix with dollops of delay and indecision.

Now apply all this to a small problem in fairly urgent need of a $200,000 fix-up job some years ago. Dump it specifically into Northland's biggest lake and by now you have a monster $3 million problem.

That's a generally accepted estimate of what it is going to take in the next few months to return Lake Omapere, a few kilometres north of Kaikohe, to a body of water worthy of the title of lake.

Another failure to act by spending what has now become big money, is almost certain to render the shallow 1200ha lake into little more than a toxic, weed-choked swamp by next summer.

Conclusions in a report this month from a parliamentary select committee of inquiry into Lake Omapere's possible collapse noted that the lake was more than just a body of water.

"It is a taonga of immeasurable importance to Ngapuhi and an asset with [economic] potential to strengthen the whole region," Parliament's Maori affairs committee said.

During its inquiry, the committee was told by various Government agencies that taking action to stop the death of the lake was "not within their current priorities."

The committee might wonder if any agency or department would suddenly develop a priority if something such as Lake Pupuke, on Auckland's North Shore, was to start degrading into a smelly, weed-filled pit.

It would never be allowed to happen, of course, but the Far North is a long way from powerful political vote catchment areas.

Which is probably why Lake Omapere's board of Maori trustees, in whom the lake bed is vested - actively supported by Orewa-based company NZ Water Management as their agent - have battled in vain for years to get something worthwhile done.

They started in 1996 by calling for the release of 5000-odd grass carp into the lake to control weed growth after a National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research report that year said the fish would stop dense weed beds establishing across the lake.

The trustees estimated the project then would cost about $200,000, with no external funding required, and their application to the Department of Conservation for release of the carp was supported by a Niwa ecological assessment.

It took four years, to August last year, before any carp were finally released into the lake.

By this time, weed growth had exploded and responsibility for authorising grass carp releases had passed to the Fisheries Minister.

The committee's inquiry report said it acknowledged that the Department of Conservation had an obligation to seriously assess risks involved in allowing grass carp into the lake.

But it was concerned that by not weighing the potential environmental, economic and cultural harm resulting from letting the lake collapse against any risks posed by carp, the department had contributed to a $200,000 fix-up becoming a $3 million problem.

At no time did the department show it was sticking to its own policy to act in good faith with the lake trustees, the committee thundered. The net result was that Lake Omapere's health is in jeopardy.

As the lake teeters on the brink of disaster, a simple question can be asked: Why does it take a select committee of inquiry to get some action on a range of issues that the Department of Conservation was aware of and had responsibility for since 1996?

It has been said by some people closely involved in the saga that there appeared to be a philosophical reluctance at a senior level within the department to allow carp to be introduced.

Whatever the reason, the $3 million fix-it ball has now been passed to the Environment Ministry. Its first response, predictably, was to plead that its limited budget could not pay for all the environmental damage in New Zealand.

No one is asking it to. All that is being sought is a commitment from the Government, via its ministry, that it underwrites a major part of the bill to rectify a problem largely caused by the inaction of one of its own agencies.

The trustees and NZ Water Management are putting $100,000 each into the kitty. The Far North District Council has promised another $100,000 on condition that other agencies come to the party as well.

The Northland Regional Council might also help in its next budget but the money, from wherever, must come urgently during the late autumn and winter months when weed growth in the lake is slow.

Other than what has been committed, the local community has no more money to make a difference in the short term.

There are now 40,000 carp in the lake battling to control 30,000 wet-weight tonnes of weed. At 40 tonnes a day, even those voracious carp face an uphill struggle. Only 22,000 more are ready for release.

Other options for the lake's long-term survival and enhancement include mechanical harvesting of weed or localised herbicide spraying to make holes in weed beds while growth is slow.

The ministry, meanwhile, thinks Lake Omapere is largely a community problem. It wants to know what priority the regional community intends to give to the matter while it talks of finding long-term solutions but not of funding them.

Sound familiar?