Letters to the Editor: Erosion, taking the bus and emergency vehicles

• Published date: 15 February 2023
• Publication title: Otago Daily Times: Web Edition Articles (New Zealand)

Concern for area behind groyne shared

I would like to support the concerns of Mr Paul Munro and the Aramoana League (ODT, 7.2.23) regarding erosion of the Aramoana ecological area behind Long Mac groyne at the harbour entrance.

Not only is the ecological area at risk of erosion but also the land around the historic pilot houses, which have New Zealand heritage status. These dunes are mostly man-made with the construction of the mole and Long Mac groyne. The groynes stop sand from blocking the harbour mouth and also assist tidal flow to self-scour the harbour entrance, thus assisting Port Otago with dredging.

The groynes were engineered in 1884 and have performed well. The sand dunes from the Long Mac groyne at Shelley Beach towards the old pilot wharf has had no maintenance in possibly 40 years, unlike the mole, which does get repaired and maintained. I believe Long Mac groyne should belong to the same consent to repair and maintain with ease.

I do congratulate Kevin Winders, Port Otago chief executive, for the offer of sand dune restoration and think all consents for this work should be approved easily by Otago Regional Council and Department of Conservation.

[Abridged]

Bill Brown

Port Chalmers

Bus drivers

Driving a bus calls for near continuous contact with those who make up the transported. Some, who are perpetually at odds with any form of service, will in certain situations cast around them for the first available person to blame for, say the late or non-arrival of a scheduled service bus, irrespective of the cause.

The local Go Bus service is currently running 10 drivers short, and the haemorrhage of a further three due to public abuse, can only be a case of these clowns shooting themselves in the foot.

Our bus service gives handy access to the centre city for this ''geriatric'' who has a car and uses it daily, but wishes to side-step the parking hassles, streets continually blocked off, ''coned'' out of existence, or calling for lengthy detours.

There are those who would see having to leave their gas-gobbler ''status symbol'' SUV parked in their garages at home, as a socially stigmatising imposition.

My advice to those people is to ''get-over yourself'', lest we wind up, like the citizens of one of our other major centres, calling our own buses ''loser-cruisers''.

Ian Smith

Waverley

Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer's comments (ODT, 8.2.23) about the lunatic machinations of the American military make amusing reading, though the column's heading is a little...