Marlborough Sounds In Dire Danger Due To Bureaucratic Indifference
Marlborough's Pete Watson is a former commercial fisherman/diver and now a self-declared ardent environmentalist and he is concerned to the point of anger about the health of the Marlborough Sounds.
"The Marlborough Sounds is being suffocated by silt and its been going on for decades with Marlborough District council inertia to blame,” he says. “Over forty years ago, the first study in 1980 painted a graphic picture of silt runoff after commercial forestry clear felling logging."
The lack of action by council continues as shown by Marlborough Mayor John Leggett recently saying after a recent study again pointing to the dire situation, that "there was nothing new in the report and that council had been aware of it for ten years".
"Only ten years? What about the rest!” exclaims Pete Watson.
He points to a scientific paper (O’Loughlin) - forty-two years ago - that compared sediment loads between harvested (logged) forestry areas and unlogged areas. It showed sediment loads up to 13,000ppm from streams in harvested areas as compared to 30ppm in non-harvested.
"That’s well over 400 times more silt,” he exclaims.
Other studies followed through the 1980s. An extract reads “seabed smothered below harvested (forestry) area, but was healthy and diverse below non-harvested areas.” Dr Steve Urlich, who resigned in 2018 as Marlborough District Council’s environmental scientist, to become senior lecturer at Lincoln University, in 2015 produced research which listed 15 previous studies all identifying the steady suffocation by silt-laden runoff.
Pete Watson knows first hand of the buildup of metres deep layers of silt, having visited the Kenepuru Sound with holiday outings as early as 1974 on family camping trips to now being a semi-permanent resident. Frequent diving both commercially and recreationally over 40 years to the present, has given him first hand observation of the worsening crisis from one end of the Sounds to the other.
"Yet successive councils and successive mayors - and CEOs - have read over 15 scientific studies - identified by Dr Steve Ulrich - warning of the dire situation - and done nothing,” he says.
It is a deteriorating situation as forestry run-off in particular, from clear felled forestry areas, results in rapid accumulations of silt. Combine this with the faecal waste from extensive over-allocated marine farming in low tidal flow sites and the impact has been deep. Once abundant sea life has declined as a result. This sea life is a vital part of the health of the planet which many species rely on as part of the revolving food chain.
The smothering silt and waste is not just centimetres deep but in places, many metres deep.
In April 2020, Dr. Steve Urlich wrote a newspaper column in the “Marlborough Express” in which he deplored that the Marlborough District Council apparently no longer considered the Marlborough Sounds as the region’s “jewel in the crown”, having decided to delete that description from the Marlborough Environment Plan (M.E.P).
He further explained that “the plan continues to allow the living skin of the seabed to be continually ripped up in clouds of sediment with strewn dead and dying marine species." The Marlborough District Council “ also sanctions sediment to continue to stream off erosion-prone hill slopes, which smothers the seabed and estuaries, and discoloring the myriad of waterways of the Sounds.”
Photos taken from space clearly show the discoloration of the Kenepuru Sound in particular, caused by the sedimentation.
Pete Watson sees Marlborough District Councill inertia as "blatant hypocritical irresponsibility."
"The scientific evidence has been there for forty years now which we have been in part paying for through our rates. So why does Council procrastinate, ignore its own findings and stifle open debate by injecting paralysis by committees?"
The Marlborough District Council, "supposed guardians of the public’s interest and the public’s environment", has no alibi for inertia he says.
Pete Watson identifies the only two major influences to enter the Sounds since strict commercial fishing closures took effect in the 1980’s, as marine farming and commercial pine cultivations. Ironically the Marlborough District Council has invested in commercial forestry itself, if not in the Sounds.
He struggles to identify the reason for council’s lack of action.
Perhaps the council’s bureaucratic system and the power of the executive has silenced the elected representatives on council? Pete Watson suspects strongly that any environmental conscience of councillors has been rendered silent by the bureaucracy.
He calls on councillors to be stronger and not cowered.
"The people elect councillors in the hope of change for the better and for all. All we get is false bravado and promises every three years at election time. Then until the next election in three years time, we have to endure the meek and shallow shadows the councillors seem to materialise into,” he laments.
Meanwhile procrastination only deepen the layers of silt on the Marlborough Sounds sea bed - out of sight, out of mind it seems.