Raglan's harbour restoration project, touted last week as a model for the rest of the country, has an uncertain future.
Manager Fred Lichtwark is concerned that Environment Waikato (EW) plans to cut off its $40,000-a-year funding next year for Whaingaroa Harbour Care.
EW chairwoman Jenni Vernon said Harbour Care's funding was to be reviewed, not stopped. It would be asked to reapply.
The project, involving a massive fencing and planting effort around waterways, was begun by concerned residents in 1995 and has revived the town's harbour.
Harbour Care's success was one of the few bright lights in a damning report on the state of New Zealand's soil and water delivered last week by Morgan Williams, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
Dr Williams singled out the project as a positive example in an otherwise gloomy report on the country's environment. But Mr Lichtwark said unless more funders were found, Harbour Care would last no more than another year.
"We have sufficient funding for 12 months - that's it. Yet there's still a big job to do."
Waikato District Council contributed $20,000 annually for Harbour Care's work at Wainui Reserve, but no other funding organisation was interested, Mr Lichtwark said.
Harbour Care employs five staff and runs a nursery producing 100,000 plants a year, which are planted for free on farms.
The World Wildlife Fund is at present funding staff salaries.
Mr Lichtwark said that since Harbour Care started, 500km of waterways had been fenced and 660,000 plants planted. The project had had a huge impact on Raglan's environment.
"Ten years ago Raglan was a backwater. There was no coffee shop. You could fire a shotgun down the main street and not hit anyone. It is the environment that is now creating the growth," he said.
"Why doesn't the regional council, which has got squillions of dollars in the bank, accept that this is a working model and get in behind us?"
Mr Lichtwark said the key to Harbour Care's work was that it was practical, rather than theoretical.
"The regional council needs to employ more groups like us to do this stuff ... Instead of thrashing it out in an office, just go out and do it."
Mr Lichtwark said to improve its finances, Harbour Care was charging a dollar a plant and had also set up a business charging full cost to perform the service outside the region.
Ms Vernon said Environment Waikato was "aware of the good work Harbour Care does and we are supporters".
"The funding hasn't been cut off, it is just being reviewed."
- NZPA
Herald Feature: Conservation and Environment
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