Gisborne District Council burnt nearly 1100 cubic metres of logs, slash and other wood on a city beach on Thursday, in a trial to see whether fire is a safe way to clear debris piles that children have been climbing on, RNZ reports.
The trial took place on the beach opposite Watson Park, just east of the city. Mayor Rehette Stoltz told RNZ the council would decide on Friday whether to go ahead with the full job. If it does, a full-scale burn is planned to start on Monday 14 September, subject to final approvals, and would take around five to seven days if the weather suits, according to the council’s statement on the trial.
Michele Frey, the council’s director of liveable communities, said the piles had become a safety risk, with reports of children climbing and playing on them despite warning signs.
“Moving the large volume of wood elsewhere would be costly and impractical, so burning it on site is believed to be the safest and most efficient way to remove the hazard,” Frey said.
She said the council was using specialist equipment designed to reduce smoke and odour, fire management specialists would supervise the work, and burning would only happen when weather and wind conditions were suitable. “Before work begins, the debris will be checked for nesting birds and other wildlife. Care will also be taken to protect dunes, vegetation and the wider beach environment.”
There will be temporary access restrictions around the active work areas, and the council has warned of some short-term disruption for nearby residents and businesses. “Please follow all signs, barriers and instructions from staff and keep clear of the debris piles,” Frey said.
Stoltz said burning the wood would save a third of the cost of having it carted away. “You can just imagine the health and safety requirements we need if you have trucks operating on the beach. That is a really costly operation with a lot of health and safety safeguards in there,” Stoltz told RNZ.
With the weather improving, she said it was time to get the beaches safe for summer. “The sun is coming out. People are starting to use the beaches more,” Stoltz said.
“We have signs up but kids are kids. So we want to make sure we remove that from our main beach, burn it safely – not only so that kids don’t climb on it – we want our beaches to be an inviting place where we can have our summer and where we can welcome tourists,” Stoltz said.
Gisborne knows how dangerous beach logs can be. On 25 January 2023 an 11-year-old boy visiting from Wellington died at Waikanae Beach after a wave shifted a log he was playing on in the shallows and rolled it over him. In his findings, reported by the Herald in September 2024, Coroner Peter Ryan described the log as “one of many which littered the beach due to the poor weather conditions over the past few weeks”. The same report said council work to clear debris from the Midway section of the beach had started only two days before the boy died.
Less than three weeks later Cyclone Gabrielle struck. Stoltz said the council has since spent nearly $80 million clearing wood, slash and debris from the region’s beaches and catchment areas, and she expects the problem to last.
“This will happen for my generation. It’s more pronounced now with more pronounced logging after Cyclone Bola plantings. But there will always be – even natural stuff – that come down our riverways when there’s heavy rain,” she said. Cyclone Bola struck the East Coast in 1988.
After Gabrielle, a ministerial inquiry chaired by former Cabinet minister Hekia Parata looked at land use in the Gisborne region and Wairoa. Its May 2023 report, Outrage to Optimism, made nearly 50 recommendations, including an immediate halt to wide-scale clear felling of forestry, to be replaced with a mosaic of staged logging.
In the same 2024 Herald report, Eastland Wood Council chair Julian Kohn said operational forest management could always improve and the industry had been working on improvement for years, but added, “The idea that you are going to stop all woody debris and all sediment coming out of our waterways is an impossibility.”
Stoltz said the council was looking at its consent conditions, forestry companies were looking at their operations and the government was looking at national settings to make sure they were fit for purpose for the region’s “very, very erosion prone steep land”. “So in the long term we are attacking the problem. In the short term we are tidying up our beaches,” she said.
The council is doing the work under the emergency powers in section 330 of the Resource Management Act 1991, which it says is to address immediate risk to life and public safety. That section switches off the Act’s usual restrictions on land use, coastal work and discharges, including smoke, when an authority believes, among other triggers, that there is a sudden event “causing or likely to cause loss of life, injury, or serious damage to property”. Under section 330A, whoever carries out emergency works must tell the consent authority within seven days, and if the effects continue they must apply for any resource consents they would otherwise have needed within 30 working days of that notice.
Stoltz said the council would monitor emissions from the burn-offs. “We are compliant under the Resource Management Act to do this. It happens across the country – sometimes only in a bonfire situation – but it is allowed and we are monitoring to make sure we are colouring inside the lines,” she said.
The mayor also tied the clean-up to the summer visitor season, saying that with the loss of Rhythm and Vines it was crucial for the region to put its best foot forward. The New Year festival announced in July that this year’s event would be its last at Gisborne’s Waiohika Estate, ending a 24-year run, before it moves to a new, undisclosed location in 2027.
Is burning the wood on the beach the right call, or should it be carted away whatever the cost? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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