By Jim Flack
Accommodating Agriculture
The flood of 1947 put 25,000 hectares underwater and galvanised the Government and the newly formed Wairarapa Catchment Board into activity.
Plans were drawn up to:
Divert the Ruamāhanga River into Lake Ōnoke, bypassing it’s natural channel into Lake Wairarapa
Widen and deepen the channel of the lower Ruamāhanga
Build a stop bank system from Lake Ōnoke to Martinborough
Drain the wetlands east of Lake Wairarapa
Install floodgates to regulate the flow of water from Lake Wairarapa
Work started in 1964 and was completed in the early 1980s, protecting 17,000 hectares of farmland.
The loss of wetlands was huge – 5,500 hectares of lakes and wetlands were drained, including the extensive Pouawha Wetlands and Te Hopai Lagoon.
The Lower Wairarapa Valley Development Scheme has had a severe negative impact on fisheries, particularly mohoa (black flounder), and that wholesale wetland drainage had a massive effect on species like waikaka (brown mudfish), kōaro and banded kōkopu.
Introduced fish, plants and animals
Apart from the handful of new species introduced from the Pacific by Māori, introduced plants and animals arrived en masse with European settlement. Some plants and animals that were deliberately introduced to Wairarapa Moana as an intended improvement have had serious negative impacts on the native environment.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister from 1893-1906, Richard Seddon, promised Māori that the “acclimatisation society shall not come and put their fish in the lake”. Despite this, trout and perch were introduced as a sport fish.
Tench and rudd were introduced illegally and now compete with native fish for food.
Alders and willows were introduced for land stabilisation. Both muscle out native species.
Hornwort was introduced by accident and is an aquatic weed that can seriously clog waterways.
Sewage, effluent and sediment
Wairarapa’s five main towns have routinely discharged their sewage into the tributaries of Wairarapa Moana. Effluent and fertiliser run-off from paddocks also gets into waterways and into Wairarapa Moana, as does sediment run-off from the Wairarapa Valley during heavy rain.
Environmental awareness timeline
Although the heath of the environment has always been top of mind for tangata whenua), after 90 years of development, the environment began playing a much bigger role in the consciousness of agencies and the rest of the community at Wairarapa Moana.
In the mid-1980s, plans were abandoned to drain 1,100 hectares of Lake Wairarapa to become dairy farmland.
In 1989 a National Water Conservation Order for Lake Wairarapa recognised the native habitats and wildlife as an outstanding feature, and that minimum water levels should be maintained to protect them.
Shortly after, the Lake Wairarapa Co-ordinating Committee was established, involving government, community organisations, landowners and mana whenua.
The committee established non-statutory guidelines for the lake and its wetlands. These recognised “the spiritual and cultural significance of the Lake Wairarapa wetlands to the Māori people” and stated the intention “to consult with and give full consideration to the views of appropriate iwi authorities”.
They also set the target for lake levels, which was a compromise for allowing the largest amount of floodwater to be stored in the lake while maintaining habitat for wading birds.
In 1991 the Resource Management Act regulated the preservation of the natural character of wetlands, rivers and lakes and put tighter controls on activities affecting the environment.
In 2000, the Department of Conservation published the Lake Wairarapa Wetlands Action Plan taking note of Maori concerns about eel fishing restrictions, the spraying and burning of raupō and the restoration of harakeke habitats.
The Dairying and Clean Streams Accord was established by Fonterra in 2003 to reduce the impact of dairying on streams, rivers, lakes, groundwater and wetlands.
In 2004, Ducks Unlimited began working on 130 hectares of marginal pasture at a DOC reserve at Wairio to return it to a fully functioning wetland connected to Lake Wairarapa.
By the mid-2000s, these activities did begin to halt environmental decline at Wairarapa Moana but there was still no coordinated approach to repair a century of damage.
In 2008, Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Rangitāne o Wairarapa, Pāpāwai Marae, Kohunui Marae, Greater Wellington Regional Council, the Department of Conservation and South Wairarapa District Council came together to form the Wairarapa Moana Wetlands Project. By pooling resources and working towards a shared vision, the Project aims to achieve much more than what could have been achieved by individual organisations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Flack and his darling wife, Leanne, bought a house at the top end of Lake Wairarapa in 1993 and set about raising children that were comfortable in gumboots and could lean into the wind. Jim worked at the Wairarapa Times-Age as a journalist before joining The Department of Conservation’s (DOC) Wairarapa office. He has had enjoyable stints for Greater Wellington Regional Council and the Ministry for Primary Industries and has now found himself back with DOC. The family home is now in Featherston and Jim struggles to understand why anyone would want to live anywhere else. He aspires to be a better gardener.