Last week’s closure of SH35 between Opotiki and Gisborne has again highlighted the need for an alternative transport route for the East Coast.

The highway between Opotiki and Waihau Bay remains closed until further notice to heavy traffic due to flooding and multiple slips caused by heavy rain in the area. The road was also closed further east between Lottin Point Rd and Pohutu Rd on the Gisborne side of the East Cape due to flooding, isolating communities between the two closure points.

“As climate change makes events like last week’s flooding more common, it’s clearer than ever that this region needs the security as well as economic benefits of a deep-water wharf,” says Dave Fermah whose company Terrafermah is working with local landowners and hapu, Potikirua Trust, to build the wharf at Potikirua , between Cape Runaway and Hicks Bay .

As well as being a boon to the East Coast’s logging industry and cutting carbon emissions, the multi-purpose wharf can provide alternative ferry or boat services to guarantee access to markets and essential services for some of New Zealand’s more remote communities.

The project received a setback last Monday when the Government’s funding agency, Crown Infrastructure Partners (CIP), declined funding through its ‘Shovel Ready’ Projects fund.

Instead, CIP has given a competing project $2M initial funding to progress its proposal to establish a barging operation for logs in Te Araroa

Mr Fermah describes the decision as “extremely short-sighted”.

“We are disappointed for the region that CIP has chosen to progress a very limited and specialised barging operation,” says Mr Fermah. “It provides a worse outcome for the logging industry and offers none of the wider economic, climate or transport benefits that a multi-purpose port provides,” he says.

In addition, as last week’s flooding and slips showed, the proposed ferry service from the wharf can provide alternative transport options as well as backup during emergencies, he says.

“Waka Kotahi NZTA tells us they have budgeted $300m over the next 30 years to maintain this stretch of road. It is geologically unstable and our proposal takes all logging trucks off it,” Mr Fermah says.

Potikirua Trust chairman and local Coast Community Board Deputy Chair Allen Waenga says he had to put people up at Opotiki who had been trapped on that side of the road slip. “If we had our wharf, we could easily have sent them home on a boat,” he says.

Mr Waenga is disappointed that CIP did not make similar early funding available to his group. He believes the decision is too important to the region for the government to not have fully investigated the wharf option.

“I cannot believe that the Government did not accord us the same opportunities as others to fund a report and allow our hapus to undertake some environmental impact studies, as well as allow some extra time for our people to meet and discuss our options,” he says.

“This is a very important step-change in the future of our area. Ministers need to consider all options and allow local whanau and hapu to consider all options with all information. They have not done that.”

“They planted our lands in pine forests in 1970, and in 1972 recognised we needed a new wharf and commissioned studies. Fifty years later they still haven’t built what was recommended by the then-Ministry of Works and our people are still paying the price with logging trucks wrecking the roads and Māori landowners getting no returns on our lands from forest owners due to high transport costs,” he says.

Mr Waenga says his group is continuing to develop the wharf project and believes that its strong business case and wider community development opportunities make it an attractive investment for private or public partners.

“Upgrading transport links is the key to our region prospering,” he says. “It is time the Crown fulfilled the obligations they promised in 1972. Get us the reports so we can have our huis and get on with building our wharf.”

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