Documents Reveal Why Delays Plagued Carp Release for Cooks Beach

By Justin Tuburan

Missing paperwork, unanswered emails and iwi consultation disagreements delayed the green light for Cooks Beach’s weed-eating carp for months, documents reveal.

This comes after years of Cooks Beach residents complaining about the speed of growth impacting recreational use of the lakes, a feature advertised when surrounding houses were sold to residents.

Mercury Bay South Ratepayers Association Chairman, Paul Hopkins, says residents have been calling for the release of the weed-eating fish for at least four years with the current methods of weed-killing by herbicides and mechanical harvesters not keeping up with growth.

“The council hasn’t kept up as far as [up] keeping lake B which is consequently full of nutrients. The nutrients drive the weed growth and it’s a never ending saga really.”

Hopkins says he’s pleased to see the proposal finally get over the line, however says “there’s a lot of dissatisfaction” with how long the process has taken and even with the fact that council’s application was only sent a year ago.

Documents released to CFM under the Official Information Act reveal that Department of Conservation staff had expected to make a decision on the proposal in February, before significant delays occurred during the consultation process.

In January, department staff realised Thames Coromandel District Council had failed to attach evidence of iwi consultation despite saying such consultation had been completed.

DOC reached out to council staff for the missing evidence on January 15 and 19 with no response, which was followed by the Coromandel storm event on January 21-22 delaying TCDC’s response until January 30, where staff said they’d provide the documents by February 5.

Evidence of consultation was not sent to the department by then.

Further emails reveal that DOC staff were waiting for a response until “an admission that the Council had not engaged with iwi”.

Consultation with Ngāti Hei by both TCDC and DOC following this error resulted in an “emphatic no” to the proposal on the grounds that there is “a heightened risk of carp escaping into surrounding waterways”.

Further delays occurred in TCDC securing consultation meetings with Ngāti Hei who were, at the time, in the final stages of completing its settlement with the Crown.

The delay in submitting evidence of iwi consultation led to DOC, in April, handing council staff an ultimatum to provide the evidence by May 15 or the department would return the council’s application and charge them for the time spent processing it.

Discussions with iwi in the following months failed to reach a compromise with a planned hui in May being cancelled by Ngāti Hei “because their position is quite clear”.

Applications of this nature to DOC require evidence that relevant iwi have been consulted with, although the approval of iwi is not necessary for a successful application.

In a statement released to CFM, a TCDC spokesperson said “council won’t comment on Department of Conservation internal communications regarding our grass carp application”.

Hopkins says he’s not surprised at the extent of errors and consultation delays this application faced in the lead-up to approval.

“We’ve been living with that for a long time, that is nothing new.”

He says councillors and community board members have been entirely supportive of the proposal, however have to work within a slow bureaucratic system where “you just have to bite your tongue and wait”.

Mercury Bay Councillor and TCDC Deputy Mayor, John Grant, agrees, saying it highlights the extremely convoluted systems councils have to work through to get multiple parties to complete consultation processes and sign off approval.

He says “this is a great example of what the government needs to fix”.

“Simplifying local government will go a long way to resolve this but the government needs to review these complex and multiparty signoff proposals. This is not something a district council can fix without the central government simplifying the legislated approval processes.”

DOC Acting Regional Manager, Graham Kimber, says “there is a very low risk of the fish breeding in this environment”, but even so, “a condition of the permission requires monitoring after flood events to check if any grass carp escape”.

He says the department received 18 submissions on the proposal, all were supportive.

With this approval, TCDC has permission for the release of up to 264 grass carp for a period of two years in Cooks Beach’s two stormwater lakes.

Safety screens are set to be installed and the fish released within the next few months.