{"id":190077,"date":"2025-12-18T14:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/190077\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T14:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:10:08","slug":"mahurangi-oyster-farmers-still-waiting-for-compensation-package-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/190077\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahurangi oyster farmers still waiting for compensation package"},"content":{"rendered":"

But as that date creeps closer, the farmers are still waiting and getting increasingly desperate.<\/p>\n

It has been about two weeks since Tom Waters was able to reopen Matakana Oysters.<\/p>\n

It means he has only been able to farm for about six weeks of this year.<\/p>\n

With little time to harvest, his bills and debts have built up, and the $100,000 in compensation he got for October\u2019s sewage spill was gone in 48 hours.<\/p>\n

Waters has considered closing the doors on his business twice this year and unless he soon receives more compensation is unsure how he will carry on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year\u2019s been diabolical, I wouldn\u2019t even be in business if it hadn\u2019t been for lovely people who had donated and kept me going.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Waters said even the money can\u2019t make up for the damage done to his business.<\/p>\n

He is worried the reputational impact is too much to bounce back from.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c[The spill] was just devastating, I personally just struggled a lot after that spill. It was the worst feeling because we\u2019d just been trying to get the reputation back up again because all of us have suffered from people not wanting Mahurangi oysters because they\u2019re legitimately concerned about their safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both sides agreed to an independent loss assessor reporting on how much further compensation was needed.<\/p>\n

A few days after the report was lodged, Watercare came back with a request for more information from the farmers.<\/p>\n

However, the farmers said they have already given them all the information they have.<\/p>\n

Jim Aitken, from Mahurangi Oysters, said he is close to losing all faith in dealing with Watercare officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re stalling, they\u2019re not believing us, we\u2019ve sent an email saying, \u2018no, we\u2019ve given you everything you\u2019ve asked\u2019. They\u2019re simply not believing us. Come and see us if you don\u2019t believe it. We\u2019re here, we exist, these are all our oysters, and we\u2019re sick and tired of jumping through hoops for Watercare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much like Waters, Aitken\u2019s compensation went straight into paying off debt incurred from the sewage spill.<\/p>\n

While he was able to reopen his farm two weeks ago, the spill means he has missed out on the peak season and lost thousands of oysters.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWithout that money you just sit there in the red looking at your debt get bigger and bigger because, quite simply, even if we are open, it\u2019s not like we can sell every oyster we have right then and there. We have to start this whole new process, get customers\u2019 confidence back.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Aitkin said he has lost all confidence in Watercare, he is still hopeful it will pay up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want compensation to make up for the fact that I\u2019ve had to stop two roles because I can\u2019t afford to pay them, so I want compensation to be able to employ people so they can continue to work and keep the farm running.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make sure that this never happens again… and actual accountability from Watercare, so if this ever happens again it\u2019s just an immediate fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahurangi Oyster Farmers Association chairwoman Lynette Dunn said she is disappointed by the back and forth with Watercare.<\/p>\n

She said farmers were originally promised compensation by December 19.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting for the last seven years, we\u2019ve been going into more and more debt. So with that last payment… that came through, that just got gobbled up into paying all our expenses that had occurred over quite a period of time, so there\u2019s nothing in our accounts to get us through the next three months, four months.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the clock ticks on Watercare\u2019s promise the farmers have all agreed on one thing.<\/p>\n

They have got a long road ahead to recover financially and revive their product\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

In a statement to Checkpoint, Watercare chief operations officer Mark Bourne said it expects the loss assessment report to be finalised in the new year.<\/p>\n

He said Watercare acted quickly and in good faith to respond to the impacts by first providing $1m to the oyster farmers affected and then appointing an independent loss assessor with aquaculture expertise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe assessor has met with the oyster farmers and is now assessing losses on an individual, per-farm basis. This is a complex process and care is being taken to ensure assessments are thorough and fair.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the information in the report will enable it to confirm the next steps and timing.<\/p>\n

This will involve Watercare contacting the oyster farmers individually to discuss outcomes and arrange any final payments.<\/p>\n

Bourne said it knows the overflow caused considerable stress to the farmers and Watercare would learn from the incident.<\/p>\n

\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But as that date creeps closer, the farmers are still waiting and getting increasingly desperate. It has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[334,24364,12967,2082,118936,111,43,139,69,82166,22367,24365,6100,10510],"class_list":["post-190077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-compensation","tag-evie","tag-farmers","tag-for","tag-mahurangi","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oyster","tag-package","tag-richardson","tag-still","tag-waiting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}