Council said it could provide opportunities to promote cultural awareness and the significance of this site. <\/p>\n
Contact was made with Ng\u0101ti Hokop\u016b and Te R\u016bnanga o Ng\u0101ti Awa and site visits occurred with archaeologists and hap\u016b representatives. An agreement in principle for the realignment arose from a hap\u016b meeting in October 2024.<\/p>\n
Allowing a volunteer group led – by Whakat\u0101ne residents Austin Oliver and Angus Robson – to put forward a proposal to restore the current track at their own cost is among the options to be put before council.<\/p>\n
Staircase option: An alternative route for the \u014chope to \u014ctarawairere track, (in light yellow) skirts a historic p\u0101 site but is still reliant on areas of track the council considers at high risk of being damaged by further slips, (in red). Image \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Robson was unhappy the Westend walkway volunteer group would not have the opportunity to speak to its proposal at the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been disallowed from presenting our option at the council meeting on Thursday,\u201d Robson told Local Democracy Reporting on Monday.<\/p>\n
Mayor Nandor Tanczos urged people not to \u201cjump the gun\u201d over the issue as no decisions had yet been made.<\/p>\n
He said the plans of Robson and Oliver\u2019s volunteer group were clear to councillors from their previous presentation.<\/p>\n
Councillors were very aware of the strategic value of the track, both as a tourism destination and as a much-beloved place for people in the district, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say what is going to come out of [Thursday\u2019s] meeting but I think councillors are very aware of the desire in the community to reopen that track,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been given some ideas about how to go forward but we are also very aware that there are people in the community that have some ideas about how they think this could be done more cost effectively using volunteers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think most councillors are very sympathetic to what they\u2019re trying to do.\u201d <\/p>\n
Attached to the report are almost 150 pages of consultants\u2019 reports, including geotechnical reports from CMW Geosciences, Avalon Geotechnical Services and Tonkin & Taylor, carried out between December 2023 and June 2025.<\/p>\n
Two further reports by project design and delivery company reNature review a geotechnical report by HD Geo in September 2024 and investigate the potential realignment of the track over the hill.<\/p>\n
Also included is a high-level review of these reports by WSP, dated December 2025.<\/p>\n
The WSP report notes Tonkin & Taylor\u2019s Quantitative Landslide Risk Assessment which puts the annual individual fatality risk for a member of the public on the currently closed route as between one in 16 million and one in 1.5 billion.<\/p>\n
This puts the risk within the \u201cLow\u201d category of guidance set out in the Bay of Plenty Regional Policy Statement and in the \u201creduce to as low as reasonably practicable\u201d of guidance set out by the Department of Conservation and GNS Science.<\/p>\n
The Tonkin and Taylor report indicates that this risk could be further lowered if the track was closed to the public during and after heavy rain events, which was when slips occurred.<\/p>\n
It also put the risk of further damage to the track from slips requiring costly repairs as high.<\/p>\n
This risk is lower for the alternative vertical staircase route, however this route still relied on existing parts of the track at both the \u014chope and \u014ctarawairere ends that were high risk.<\/p>\n
The lowest risk and lowest cost option to council was identified as permanently closing the track between \u014chope and the lookout.<\/p>\n
The council staff report noted this option \u201cmay have an impact on the local visitor economy\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it is expected this would be marginal over the long term. Visitors and the community could access \u014ctarawairere Bay from the existing track off \u014ctarawairere Road,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Council said it could provide opportunities to promote cultural awareness and the significance of this site. Contact was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[41928,17163,5205,24571,7557,19134,305,3012,27705,146358,111,43,139,69,1118,90,4481,423,10903,75725,63502,1516,161014,61,22974,161013,2240],"class_list":{"0":"post-290349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-alternate","9":"tag-closure","10":"tag-council","11":"tag-decide","12":"tag-district","13":"tag-forward","14":"tag-have","15":"tag-hopes","16":"tag-instead","17":"tag-lookout","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-of","23":"tag-on","24":"tag-permanent","25":"tag-point","26":"tag-popular","27":"tag-recommended","28":"tag-route","29":"tag-staff","30":"tag-tarawairere","31":"tag-to","32":"tag-track","33":"tag-westend","34":"tag-whakatne"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290349","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=290349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}