Freshwater anglers to continue legal fight against rafting
Monday, 13 April 2020
A freshwater angling group who want to stop commercial rafting on a Southland river have revised the amount they are trying to crowd fund, but they have vowed to continue their fight.
The NZ Southern Rivers Board is seeking a judicial review of the Gore District Council's decision to grant resource consent to a commercial rafting operation on the Mataura and Oreti rivers.
'We are focused upon the point of legal principle, which is that affected people should be entitled to participate in bureaucratic decisions that seriously affect them,' NZ Southern Rivers Board chairman Don Wallace said.
The board began a Givealittle page last year seeking $200,000 in donations.
**READ MORE:
* Angling group seeks funds to fight rafting consent on Southland rivers
* Anglers seeking review of rafting operation consent on Southland rivers
* Rafting operation approved on Southland rivers**
The total sought had now been revised to $60,000, and it had received more than $5000.
Because of the Covid-19 lock down the Board met by a Zoom link-up on March 24, where it was decided to continue with legal action.
The council granted the rafting operation a non-notified consent in November 2019.
'We want the rafting proposal to be publicly notified, as it should have been at the start. We think this goal is readily achievable.'
He said the judicial review process was now slower than the board anticipated because of the Covid-19 lockdown, but the group remained dedicated to its original objective.
'Our legal team is being very generous to the cause because of the important point of law,' Wallace said.
The Board had engaged Queens Council Pru Stevens, of Christchurch, who said at the heart of the Judicial Review application is that if [it was] not upheld it would enable councils up and down the country to issue resource consents without public notification.
In December, society member Casey Cravens told Stuff the fundamental issue was that the councils had not consulted with the public before granting consent, and had not carried out any impact studies on how the rafting operation would affect the river.
'We don't think the effects are no more than minor. You can't put rafts over those fish in expect their behaviour to remain the same or for them to continue to feed the same way.'
The rafting operation would run three rafting trips in the Southland district - on the Mataura River from the confluence with the Nokomai River to Cattle Flat, and from Mataura to Wyndham, and on the Oreti River from Lumsden to Dipton.
Southland District Council team leader resource management Marcus Roy told Stuff in November that the rafting company had changed its initial application so during the fishing season rafting would only operate in the Upper Mataura when the river is at or above 30 cumecs, 'so it is unlikely there will be any fishermen around. The two activities can co-exist.'