Port expansion may face legal action

Monday, 14 April 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.

A marine guardian says legal action might be the only way to get Lyttelton Port Company to heed the concerns of residents and stop it’s expansion project.

“We’ve knocked [on doors] for so long that we need to break it down,” said Nuk Korako, a former National Party MP and current Rāpaki Tangata Tiaki.

He told the 60 people gathered for a meeting in Lyttelton on Sunday that environmental lawyers had been in contact and a judicial review is being considered to get the Lyttelton Port Company (LPC) to stop “commandeering” public land.

LPC’s port recovery plan - which builds new land in the harbour - was approved in 2015 after then-earthquake recovery minister Gerry Brownlee used emergency powers under the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act to bypass typical consent rules.

Korako, who was a colleague of Brownlee after the quakes, said the port’s intentions went well beyond earthquake recovery.

His opinion was backed by Tā Mark Solomon, who told those at the meeting how he challenged LPC’s plans when he first heard them a member of an earthquake recovery committee he sat on with local mayors, which went on to advise Brownlee.

Solomon believed the plans went beyond the scope of earthquake recovery and thought it was “naive” of them not to expect negative impacts on the harbour.

Korako said: “This is not just about reclamation. This is about the commandeering of public land and access to public land in the interest of economics.

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.

“It’s actually about the industrial creep that’s come into our harbour”.

He said LPC had already applied to Linz for the title over the land without talking to mana whenua.

A judicial review may be the only way to stop the project before more damage is done to the harbour, he said, and that data proved damage was being done to the marine ecosystem.

Banks Peninsula and National Party MP Vanessa Weenink said she attended Sunday’s meeting to listen and ensure the Government would hear “all sides” of the issue. (File photo)

Acknowledging those who spoke to the declining health of the harbour and what should be done - including Mishele Radford from Ngāti Wheke, Genevieve Robinson from Environment Canterbury (ECan), and Chris Hepburn, a marine biologist at the University of Otago - Korako said people needed to work together to take action.

He said the consequences of the port’s work affected more than just mana whenua, and proposed a working group comprising representatives from all interested groups, including local politicians and Lyttelton residents.

ECan councillor Vicky Southworth told the meeting she believed the earthquake recovery act had been used in a “disingenuous” way to push LPC’s plans.

She said to describe the plans as ‘reclaiming’ land was just a sanitised way to say “taking marine habitat ecosystems and turning it into land to store coal, timber”.

Banks Peninsula and National Party MP Vanessa Weenink, who was at the meeting, told The Press she was there to listen and ensure the Government would hear “all sides” of the issue.

LPC chief executive Graeme Sumner previously said he acknowledged mana whenua’s opposition to the reclamation programme, but it would continue nonetheless.

He said there was a construction environmental plan and a sustainability framework based on international best practice.