L.E BENJAMIN 1/30/19
IMPACT STATEMENT
My name is Lois Benjamin and I live at 1130 Collingwood Puponga Main Road at Pakawau, my late husband and I bought the property in 1983. My childhood at Kahurangi lighthouse changed when my parents and family moved to Collingwood in 1959 and my father took the position of camp manager of the council owned Collingwood Camp. My working life consisted of some 33 years in the health sector with 15 years in the Joan Whiting Rest Home and a further 18 years working for “Health Care”, “Access,” and for a time, “Nurse Maude” providing home care and basic medical care for the aged and infirm, a position I still hold today. A further 35 years employed at the Collingwood post office working shift work in conjunction with my other commitments.
As I near the end of my working life, the last thing I need or expect is the stress involved with the ever encroaching beachfront erosion threatening my home, my life’s work, my security, I struggle with the logic of watching the reserve just crumble into the sea when it so easily can be fixed, just like so much of our district has been, and is still being fixed, even today a new rock wall is being built on public land at Puponga. I am not so unrealistic as to expect other people to pay for my peace of mind so have no qualms about paying the bill myself but to have to go through 5 years of bureaucratic process is , in my book, absolutely and totally unacceptable. In many locations around the lovely Golden Bay, erosion is rife but any council administered public land is immediately protected with rock armour as the situation demands, the council owned Pohara Camp springs to mind, and recently the cycle way in Richmond, fixed in 3 months, so why can’t Pakawau Beach receive the same treatment? No one is asking Council or rate payers to fund it, all Council have to do is adapt a common sense approach and allow it to happen.
In holiday times I enjoy having my great grandchildren to stay but I am constantly on edge and apprehensive when they are playing on the beach, the 3 metre erosion cliff is continually slipping and crumbling onto the beach below so I feel the need to supervise their playtime activities because the last straw would be a buried child, it would not have a happy ending I feel.
During past storms I have stood and watched as 2 metres or more a tide, complete with shrubs, flax, and other decorative plants just flop into the sea to finish up immediately north of Tomatea reserve complete with the
shrubbery, I ask myself, “why am I not allowed to fix this”?, Why can I not build a wall the same as the Council did at the Collingwood Camp and the
L.E BENJAMIN 1/30/19
IMPACT STATEMENT
Dept of Conservation did in Collingwood Beach Road? This doesn’t seem to be fair to me! What have we residents done to deserve this discrimination?
Over recent years since 2014, we have been blessed with 3 sand push-ups to bolster the dunes, the last one endured just over a month and was gone. The previous two started to erode the next tide after construction and duly dissolved over following months. I was on the beach during the last sand push-up and saw live shellfish and other beach life being pushed up against the bank with the sand. I am at a loss to see just how this is environmentally beneficial.
Please, can we get some permanent solution here? Can we bypass the warm fuzzy, feel good approach and protect what is left of the reserve and our homes with some sound engineering solution just as TDC use to protect their own assets.
Thank-you for listening Lois Benjamin
