NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Moa Point failure in Wellington, has been a “nightmare” for the south coast community, a business group says, and a financial package is vital for some businesses’ survival.

It comes as Wellington City Councillors approved a financial support package of $200,000 – with one-off grants of up to $35,000 available.

In a council meeting on Thursday, Destination KRL general manager Steve Walters said the grant would be a “a matter of survival” for some.

“[The grant] will be totally well-used for businesses that are really struggling on the south coast.”

Walters said over six billion litres of raw sewage had spewed into the sea since February 4, when the wastewater treatment plant flooded.

That had resulted in a “massive” drop in visitors to the South Coast and people avoiding the water, especially Lyall Bay, he said.

“The Moa Point plant failure, it’s a nightmare – on top of a really tough period for businesses – that should never have happened.”

He said that 25 businesses in the area had lost between 25 and 70 per cent of their revenue due to the disaster.

Three months on, businesses hadn’t been told anything about when exactly the plant would be fixed, he said.

Ocean Hunter owner Hugh Collins, who previously said the sewage disaster was “gutwrenching” said he was reducing his own income to keep staff employed, but could no longer do that.

“I’ve got a newborn son, he’s five weeks old, I can’t support my family if this continues and we don’t see support.”

His business – which specialised in spear-fishing, free-diving and scuba-diving equipment, relied on activity in summer months, to get through winter.

Collins urged the council to take another look at the criteria for the grants which mandated a 50 per cent reduction in revenue to be eligible for the grants.

“If we miss out on this kind of funding, we will go under. I won’t have an income, I’ll have to let go our staff, where there will be six of us unemployed. And that’s just the truth of it.”

In order to be eligible, businesses would have to apply for the grants and meet certain criteria, including being located within a “high-impact zone”, or directly reliant on ocean activities, be Wellington-owned with fewer than 20 employees, and operating for at least a year.

Councillors decided to increase the amount of the financial package from $150,000 to $200,000. About $150,000 comes from the City Growth Fund, and $50,000 from organisational savings.

Chief Operating Officer Charles Barker told Local Democracy Reporting that it was out of the council-controlled organisation’s mandate to deviate from set budgets, and was up to the councils’ whether to reallocate funds.

Councillors also passed an amendment which would allow the chief executive through the mayor to deviate from criteria in a minor way, including that businesses needed to demonstrate a 50 per cent reduction in revenue,

Northern ward councillor Andrea Compton said while she didn’t ordinarily back corporate welfare, communities were in a critical state through “no fault of their own”.

Eastern Ward councillor Jonny Osborne said he was happy to support the package, adding that “certainty” around the recovery was vital.

“This is a complicated and a complex system, I know it’s not easy, but I do want to put on the record that I really want to see Wellington Water get that recovery plan out as soon as they can so these businesses can start planning for this disruption and when it will end.”

Wellington Water said it would provide a detailed timeline of repair works of the Moa Point plant to the council in the next two weeks.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

An albatross injured in last week’s lower North Island storm was released off the coast of Napier on Thursday and two others hurt in the same wild weather are on the road to recovery.

They’ve rehabilitated at Palmerston North’s Wildbase Hospital, where they’re treated to a diet of salmon and get to swim in an indoor pool.

The hospital’s manager says the increasing frequency of storms is keeping the service busier than usual.

Salmon smolt and an indoor pool

Last week, four injured and weak albatrosses were rushed to the Massey University-run hospital for sick and injured wildlife. One had a broken pelvis and had to be euthanised.

When RNZ visited, associate professor Megan Jolly, the hospital manager, was supervising a juvenile albatross found on the Taranaki coast and gliding around a 3.5 metre swimming pool.

“The advantage of the pool is it’s inside, so if they’re a little bit weak, we can control the air temperature,” Jolly said. “More importantly, it doesn’t give him the option of getting off the pool – it’s got high sides.

“When they’re weak and inherently lazy, they’ll get out and sit on the side.”

The recovering birds are well looked after. When they’re not in the water, they sit in rooms, on padding and towels to protect their feet, and get fed whole salmon smolt.

“His delicate feet, they’re designed to be on the ocean. They’re not designed to be on land, they’re very easily damaged.

“Sitting here on the pool is the best place for them.”

Jolly said giving rescued wildlife a cute name wasn’t the done thing. Instead, they were referred to by where they were found, so the albatross RNZ watched was known as Pātea.

He suffered a suspected soft-tissue injury.

“He’s preening now, so he’s just cruising around on the water, fluffing his feathers up, and that’s the best thing he can do,” Jolly said. “Part of the the problem with the storm is that he gets a bit roughed up and it can disrupt those feathers.

“It’s the structure of the features and them being perfect that makes him waterproof.”

More storms cause more injuries

Usually, the hospital wouldn’t see many rescued seabirds until winter storms, but this year had been busy already, with injured albatrosses in its care after February’s wild weather.

“With climate change, and the increase in frequency and severity of storms, we are seeing a lot more seabirds dumped on New Zealand’s shores,” Jolly said. “These guys were all thin and a bit weak, when the storm got to them.”

She said, if anyone saw an injured seabird, the best thing to do was ring a local bird rescue group or the Department of Conservation.

Small birds could be handled with a towel, but that wasn’t a good idea for larger seabirds. Albatrosses could have wing spans of more than three metres and their beaks were razor sharp.

“There’s always a discussion in our group text of, when a big storm comes through, everyone picks when they think the seabirds will start to arrive,” Jolly said. “It’s usually about three days after a storm.

“We see that delay, because people aren’t out in the storm, when it’s happening. It takes maybe a day for the storm to clear, people to be out there and then they find these birds.”

Public attraction

Of the two albatrosses found in Wairarapa, one was released off Hawke’s Bay on Thursday.

Before it was set free, it was on public show on Wednesday afternoon at the Central Energy Trust Wildbase Recovery Centre in Palmerston North’s Esplanade gardens.

Centre manager Chris Smith said it was a rare chance for people to get so close to a seabird.

“It’s actually just out here for an hour for the public to get a chance to pop in and see something that’s pretty unusual,” he said.

“It’s not here for a long time, because they don’t do well in this environment, but it’s just here for a really unique chance for people to see it.”

A steady stream of people came in to see the bird, but many more were at the centre to see a large royal albatross injured in February’s storm.

The recovery centre opened in 2019 and attracts about 80,000 visitors a year.

Meanwhile, the albatross from Pātea had a few more days to get stronger in the indoor pool.

“Still being onshore in New Zealand is not where he’s supposed to be,” Jolly said. “He’s supposed to have fledged from his nest and gone out over the Pacific Ocean, and disappeared for a couple of years, then come back as perfectly coloured adult.”

He and the other bird found in Wairarapa would be released in the coming days.

On Thursday, another albatross likely injured last week arrived at Wildbase Hospital, suffering damage to its feet and dehydration.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Police are warning people planning to take part in informal bike rides across Auckland that they’ll be watching and taking action against anyone not following road rules or engaging in “anti-social behaviour”.

Police are aware of events this weekend and four separate events in May, Inspector Dave Christoffersen said.

“Riders need to consider their behaviour and the risk they are posing to themselves and others.

“Previous events have seen riders all over the road, blocking cars, doing wheelies and in some instances intimidating members of the public.”

Police will either take immediate action or will follow up after the event, he said.

Event organisers are asked to help keep everyone following the rules and safe.

People need to be wearing a helmet, riding in single file when in a group, stick to the left-hand side of the road and follow the road rules the same as a motorist, Christoffersen said.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A local council representative has called for “balance”, as the government contemplates a cap on unsustainable rates increases.

The legislation, which would restrict the increases to 2-4 percent each year, was proposed for early 2027, with a two-year transition period, but international credit ratings agency S&P warned the limit would squeeze councils already struggling to make ends meet.

Only five of 78 councils have delivered a rates increase below four percent for the 2025/26 year.

Local Government NZ board member and Palmerston North Mayor Grant Smith told Checkpoint some local bodies could show more “discipline” in their spending and could also be smarter about how they carried out their business.

“I can understand why it’s happening for some communities that have had real high increases over a number of years,” he said.

“I can understand totally where the concept is coming from and the discipline isn’t really a bad thing. We share some of those ideas, but it’s got to be balanced.

“We’ve seen what’s gone on in Australia, where there has been a very hard line and when things start breaking, you get a massive, massive bill.”

Smith suggested one necessary change to the proposed legislation was how the rates band was decided.

“It’s measured off CPI [Consumer Price Index], but councils don’t buy groceries or even a lot of petrol,” he said.

“We buy infrastructure, we buy buildings, we build roads and we purchase pipes, and that’s all quite differently indexed.

“Pipe manufacturers and construction and bridge builders all don’t work off CPI – they work off the open market and, consequently, we’ve been dealt to over a number of years.”

Smith suggested councils could look at other ways to cut their costs, including the assets they owned and operated in the community.

“We’ve always done things traditionally,” he said. “We’ve always owned things as councils, but possibly we can lease things.

“We all own museums, we own convention centres – do we really need to own them? We could lease them.

“Libraries and some chambers and some community centres are not things you would do that to, but there are different ways of dealing with it.

“We’ve just to think differently – it’s all small stuff and low-hanging fruit, but it makes a difference.”

While many were critical of exorbitant local government salaries, Smith denied staff were overpaid for their skills.

“Every council and every staffing situation will be different, and I think we are putting a very simplistic view that council people just turn up and do very mundane work,” he said.

“Some of them do incredibly complex work, whether it’s a chief planner in a very big council making billion-dollar decisions for their organisation – you can’t pay those people peanuts.

“I think it’s horses for course and I think there is a bit of simplistic talk about wages and what people are worth.

“Do we need to be a bit smarter about how we recruit and that sort of thing? Yes, I think there is an element of that, but again, balance has to come into the discussion.”

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand