Regional council builds Palace, refuses help to dredge Otago boat harbour

The ironies are Most Apparent.

The Otago Regional Council contributed $30m to the stadium roof (an activity beyond its local authority mandate), yet the council has no intention of helping the Otago Yacht Club to maintain the city’s marina, the Otago Boat Harbour.

[click to enlarge]
DCC Webmaps – Otago Boat Harbour at Mouth of Leith JanFeb 2013

Otago Yacht Club’s origin dates back to 1892, making it one of the oldest yacht clubs in Otago. The club caters for a range of sailing interests from keelboats to trailer yachts and centreboarders. The club also operates keeler haul-out facilities and welcomes visiting boats. The club manages a full events programme during summer, including harbour, coastal and ocean races. On Sunday mornings in the season the club runs ‘learn to sail’ and ‘learn to race’ programmes which cater for all ages. The clubhouse is a popular venue for private functions and for local organisations to hold meetings and events. Within walking distance of the city centre, the clubhouse offers showers, laundry facilities, email connections etc. The resident caretaker-manager will usually manage to accommodate requests for berthage for boats up to 50 feet. The alongside mooring facilities consist of several large punts inside a walled boat harbour. Due to silting, access to the boat harbour has only been tenable approximately two hours either side of high tide for boats with 2m draft. The Otago boat harbour was last dredged in 1995.
Source: otagoyachtclub.org.nz

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### ODT Online Thu, 20 Apr 2017
Club gets go-ahead to dredge boat harbour
By David Loughrey
The Otago Boat Harbour is about to get its first dredging in more than 20 years, after the facility reached such a state rescue vessels could not leave the harbour at low tide. The work, expected to start soon, has been described as a major achievement by the Otago Yacht Club, which leases the boat harbour. Club vice-commodore Blair McNab said the cost of the project – more than $300,000 – was being paid for from grants and club membership fees. […] The club recently received resource consent from the Dunedin City Council for the work. The consent allowed the club to deposit dredged sediment and soil on land in Magnet St, behind the club, for drying. Mr McNab said once the dredged material had been dried, which took about two weeks, it would be taken to the nearby Logan Point quarry. The consent said once the work was completed, about 100cu m would remain on the grass area at Magnet St to form a barrier around its perimeter, and provide better drainage. The consent decision said the boat harbour was in such a state that at low tide, craft used for harbour rescues could not get out. […] The club had hoped the Otago Regional Council might help with the cost of the dredging, as alterations to the Water of Leith meant more spoil was coming from the nearby mouth of the stream. Mr McNab said it appeared the council was not going to help.
Read more

The Star April 2014 via Otago Yacht Club. Also at ODT Online 22.4.14

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The Otago Regional Council’s “special consultation” over its Dunedin headquarters is flawed, writes former councillor Gerrard Eckhoff.

### ODT Online Tue, 18 Apr 2017
Review needed in lieu of proper consultation
By Gerrard Eckhoff
The Otago Regional Council’s annual plan is now open for public consultation. Implicit in the word consultation is the opening of a meaningful dialogue with the public. It would be entirely disingenuous for any local authority to enter into discussion on their annual plan by merely informing the public of council intent without showing a willingness to accept “the wisdom of crowds”.
….This year’s ORC annual plan contains four lines on “Dunedin building review” in its feedback document which could easily be missed at first reading. To its credit, the council has finally accepted its statutory obligation for “special consultation” on this $30million major project.
….The last time the council ventured forth on a new building project without any prior special consultation, it cost the ratepayers upwards of $3million for the concept design and drawings alone. The cost of that proposal was well over $30million and it was never built. It is, therefore, hard to reconcile how the new building/s is going to be around the projected $20million mark, unless building costs have halved in Dunedin from eight years or so ago. The potential cost of a new car park building must also be factored in, so the ratepayers could soon be the lucky owners of two new buildings, as well as a difficult-to-sell ORC headquarters building in Stafford St.
Read more

DCC Webmap – Dowling St carpark JanFeb 2013, ORC office site starred

Related Posts and Comments:
9.1.17 ORC $wimming in it —SHOULD afford more Otago environmental…
15.8.16 ORC : Official complaints show integrity
22.6.16 ORC New HQ : Reminder, fiduciary duty and core responsibilities
● 9.6.16 ORC empire building again : Consultants give questionable options…
11.8.12 ODT editorial (spot on!) — ORC temporary headquarters
26.6.09 ORC headquarters [incl news items to present day]

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

*Images: Otago Yacht Club except where stated otherwise.

Dunedin: Artificial islands for upper harbour?

“Basically, Port Otago has no objections to the concept provided that there is widespread community support for it.”

### ODT Online Mon, 9 Jan 2012
Growing support for Harbour Islands plan
By John Lewis
A necklace of islands mooted for the upper harbour, using 7.2 million cubic metres of spoil dredged from lower Otago Harbour, is gaining traction. The Harbour Islands project was first floated last year during consent hearings of Port Otago’s application to deepen the harbour. Harbour Restoration Group member Peter Hayden said there was common consensus development was vital to the port’s future economic prosperity.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Why should Port Otago dredge?

### ODT Online Sat, 27 Mar 2010
Fishermen oppose Port Otago’s sand, silt proposal
By Allison Rudd
Otago fishermen have formed a working party to write their formal response to Port Otago’s plans to dump more than seven million cubic metres of sand and silt off Taiaroa Head. Port Otago will soon apply for resource consent to widen the Otago Harbour shipping channel and dump 7.2 million cubic metres of dredge material 6.5km out to sea.

The Port Chalmers Fishermen’s Co-operative fears the sand and silt may create a “dead zone” along the coast, threatening fishing stocks and their income.

Read more

Related posts:
21.2.10 So where’s the media explosion?
26.2.10 Latest on Dunedin’s offshore oil and gas prospects
26.2.10 Port Otago: “Next generation” project
11.3.10 ORC: Ports merger only approved if it benefits Otago
18.3.10 Dunedin harbourside for oil base?

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The interesting thing is, aside from port merger politics, a number of New Zealand’s major ports are dredging their channels in anticipation of larger container vessels.

Did the ports’ boards stop to ask the shipping line(s) ‘What size of boats are you planning to send us?’ So we, the port companies, can reliably assess if we need to fund expensive consenting processes and dredging?

Sometimes, the ports’ suit brigades aren’t up to managing their way out of a paper bag? That’s not the right question, or is it. After all, this is a matter of regional-national logistics and planning for sustainable business development in New Zealand.

Bottom line: port activity must be coordinated and quality controlled for the service and development of the national export economy as much as the global shipping trade.

The ports falling into into ad hoc, reactionary localised practice; attempting to do things on the cheap; not attending to maritime safety; not upskilling and training the workforce; failing to coordinate the spread of risk across our major deepwater facilities and access points; not inviting new business partnerships and supplier relationships; and so on – is not about promoting and building an efficient, flexible and sustainable freighting base for New Zealand producers.

Why encourage container traffic through the port of Lyttelton if their cranes are unsuitably old and clunky (showing the lack of major investment in that port company’s infrastructure)?

Why send (larger?) container ships to Port Otago if there’s no harbour master to oversee maritime safety? Why would we think to promote Dunedin as an oil base without a harbour master? (Hello, Otago Regional Council, owner of Port Otago Ltd, are you going to manage your responsibilities to the marine environment anytime soon? …An international vessel grounds in Otago Harbour, we haven’t systems and accountabilities in place to manage spillage and contamination – the boat’s full of high value Fonterra milk powder immediately due to China processing plants – we’ve f***ed the supply chain. Who doesn’t get their money, who is liable?)

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Knowing and managing risks and liabilities going forward through close modelling, system analysis and quality control of New Zealand supply chains, industry processing, freight handling and haulage, transportation planning, trade diplomacy, incentive systems, international gateway ports and airports – amongst other factors – is ESSENTIAL to growing the export economy.

Not too many people know how the ports operate. We assume all the systems and risks are being professionally managed by the port companies, according to statutory requirements.

The truth is – leaving statutory responsibilities aside for a moment (by the way, it’s not all tip-top with these) – each port has been crawling along, instituting its own limited management and operating systems. A power of work at every level is urgently needed to bring industry consistency to the safe management and competitiveness of our New Zealand ports.

Why allow a bunch of ‘sailors’ (many of them accountants with no wider training or expertise), dressed as port executives, to run New Zealand port infrastructure like they know what they’re doing. They don’t.

The ports’ middle management tiers are gripped by the heavy overwhelming reality of historical cumulative logistical weakness in the New Zealand port industry.

All up, ports’ management is not well organised – or sufficiently well skilled and educated – for the practical, hardnosed ‘change management’ required in the national port sector.

The port boards and bosses are under par as strategists. Let the blood-letting begin.

Post by Elizabeth Kerr