‘Not one more metre’ - iwi protests against port expansion

Saturday, 22 March 2025

Lyttelton Port Company is reclaiming more of Te Awaparahi Bay to enlarge its working area. But mana whenua fears this is destroying spawning grounds.

Māori in Whakaraupō-Lyttelton Harbour are furious the port company is going ahead with another reclamation project and want it stopped immediately.

“Not one more metre” has become the call to arms.

The reclamation will destroy kaimoana (seafood), which is nourishing and culturally significant to Ngāti Wheke, the indigenous people of the harbour.

The Lyttelton Port Company (LPC) calls reclamation “making land”, done by pushing rock into the ocean until dry land emerges above sea level.

The three tangata tiaki or marine guardians - from left to right Tasman Gillies, Nuk Korako and Henry Couch - at the port lookout. The land below them has been reclaimed since the earthquakes.

A new, seven-hectare phase of reclamation is now under way in Te Awaparahi Bay, about a kilometre east of the inner harbour.

The 2015 Lyttelton Port Recovery Plan ordered Christchurch City Council and Environment Canterbury (ECan) to grant consent for the reclamation by making it a “controlled activity”.

Then-earthquake recovery minister Gerry Brownlee used emergency powers granted by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act to order the plan and give it statutory force.

The company was able to use those emergency powers “to extend their capital land assets,” said Nuk Korako, the former National Party list MP who was a caucus colleague of Brownlee after the quakes.

He is now a councillor at Environment Canterbury but said he not wearing that hat while fighting LPC, but that of his role as a marine guardian.

The port “went well beyond repair and recovery … it contravened the intention of the CERA act, and it contravened our [Rāpaki’s] trust in some ways”, Korako said.

Ngāi Tahu was deeply involved in the wider earthquake response and the port recovery plan. It effectively “signed off” on the port’s plans.

But Ngāti Wheke, based at Rāpaki, always opposed more reclamation, Korako said, and he regretted that the plan had gone through.

He did not disclose what Ngāti Wheke planned to do to oppose the reclamation, apart from holding a public meeting an mid-April.

LPC chief executive Graeme Sumner said: “We acknowledge that Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke has never supported the reclamation programme in Te Awaparahi Bay.”

The port intends to proceed nonetheless.

Sumner said LPC’s reclamation had a construction environmental plan and a sustainability framework based on international best practice.

Lyttelton Port Company chief executive Graeme Sumner says a second container berth is needed.

The port created a kaimoana management plan that saw over 7000 organisms moved from Te Awaparahi Bay ahead of the reclamation, he said.

Rising freight volumes meant a second container berth was needed to prevent congestion by the early 2030s, Sumner said.

The consents from ECan and the council were publicly notified, he said.

“It’s legal and they followed the right processes, [but that] doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right or just,” said Tasman Gillies, a third-generation tangata tiaki, or marine guardian, at Rāpaki and a marine scientist.

“We’ve been raising these concerns for generations.”

Reclamation work in Lyttleton Harbour is already under way.

Tangata tiaki are appointed by the minister of primary industries and have statutory powers.

“Anything that impacts on the fishery is our business,” said Korako, who is also a tangata tiaki.

The north side of Lyttelton Harbour - the LPC side - was always the spawning and nursery grounds for pāua, mussels and many other edible species, said Henry Couch, who was appointed a Rāpaki tangata tiaki in 1998, one of the first in the country.

“In no circumstances were we allowed to gather [kai] there,” the elder said.

Instead, they boated across to the south side and gathered kaimoana in its many bays.

There was less seafood in the harbour due to the loss of the nursery grounds and he said the reclamation of Te Awaparahi Bay would make it worse.

Earlier reclamations - Naval Point, the petroleum terminal areas, Cashin Quay and the coal handling area - had disrupted the currents that once “flushed” the harbour, Couch said.

When he worked at the port in the 1960s and 1970s the currents were strong enough to break mooring lines tying large ships to the quay, he said, and a breakwater had to be built to protect the ships.

The changed currents affected species that needed water flow to survive. They also contributed to silting at the head of the harbour, Couch said.

Sumner maintained that LPC had a “good partnership and working relationship” with Ngāti Wheke and had worked extensively to increase the health of the harbour.

The Whaka-Ora Healthy Harbour partnership, formed by Ngāti Wheke, Ngāi Tahu, the council, ECan and the port, was an example, he said.

To protect sealife from the coming reclamation, Tasman Gillies led a separate Rāpaki effort to move species from Te Awaparahi Bay to other areas of the harbour, but it is not known if any of the plants and animals moved would survive.

The tangata tiaki said gathering kaimoana was open to all-comers, not just Māori.

The port’s eastward expansion could see it vacate the inner harbour in the decades ahead and create a hospitality, retail and yachting centre on Lyttelton’s waterfront.

For that to happen, the port might need to reclaim more land to the east.

“Some people cannot see the fish for the money on top the water,” said Couch.

The public meeting to discuss these matters has been called by the Rāpaki tangata tiaki and Lyttelton community leaders at St Saviour's Church, 17 Winchester St, Lyttelton, at 3pm on Sunday, April 13.