CommunityAction for People and Planet. P.O. Box 68, Motueka. Phone 021 174 0400 email : duncaneddy@yahoo.com
Meeting vows to fight netting
Nelson Mail, 16 November 2006, by Tom HuntResidents from around Motueka are vowing to stop what they call the "red scourge" - the widespread use of bright red shade netting by the area's orchardists.
About 100 people attended a meeting at the Riwaka Hall on Wednesday night to discuss the red shade cloth, used by some orchardists to protect and enhance their crops.
Almost all the people at the meeting, organised by Duncan Eddy of Community Action for People and Planet, were opposed to the netting.
A show of hands revealed that the major concern was a lack of consultation by the Tasman District Council, followed by the potential scale of the netting and its colour.
Mr Eddy said he had intended to bring concerned parties together in a neutral forum.
He was disappointed "that the people using the red netting didn't come along", and that what was meant to be a sharing of ideas had become a call to arms.
Moutere resident Nick Withers told the meeting "the red scourge has entered the Moutere", and warned that there would be a lot more of the netting coming.
He called for the community to form a strategy to fight the netting. This could potentially involve taking a class action lawsuit.
Resource management lawyer Shona Bradley said the case could go to the Environment Court or even, eventually, to the High Court.
Under the current Tasman Resource Management Plan, the red netting is classified as a greenhouse and requires only a certificate of compliance, and not a resource consent.
At present, certificates have been issued for more than 100ha near Riwaka.
Councillors did not attend the meeting - bringing jeers from the crowd - but council policy manager Steve Markham appealed for opponents to work through bureaucratic processes to resolve the issues.
Mr Markham said they should consider four options to push the council for - continue with the status quo; treat the netting as a permitted activity, but limit sites and sizes; require a resource consent for netting over a certain size; or completely prohibit the netting.
The last option was a "draconian option" that would never get council approval, he said.
There were further bureaucratic options available if the council did not adopt their suggestions, he added.
"Your council are your community representatives. Give them the benefit of the doubt for some time, and if that doesn't work, then go for the legal options."
Mr Markham said the council had received hardly any public submissions against the netting since it started appearing in the area about two years ago.
He suggested that the first step could be for interested parties to express their concerns during the public forum sessions of council meetings on November 22 and December 6.
Only one person at Wednesday night's meeting spoke in favour of the netting. He said he had lived in the Motueka area for more than 60 years, and there had always been horticulture in the area.
He pointed out that a lot of the complaints were coming from home owners in the surrounding hills, who had moved there long after horticulture started in the area.