Cr Bill Faulkner Faulkners Corner www.sunlive.co.nz

Tauranga City Council and the regional and Western Bay councils continue to play an integral part in the consequences of the Rena shipwreck on Astrolabe Reef.

Shipwreck is my term – it's unlikely to come off the reef other than in bits!

Council staff are doing administration on behalf of Maritime New Zealand, the government agency that oversees this sort of catastrophe.

Government is to reimburse costs – hopefully recouped from Rena's insurers.

Obviously councils (ratepayers) can't sustain this sort of staff input for other than short term and this won't be a short term fix.

Just getting the oil off will be short term (weeks) compared to getting the containers off.

There is a container lift ship here to cut the containers off, drop them in the water and tow them clear of the reef so that the lifting gear can get a vertical lift out of the sea.

Building up the pace

Some interesting tidbits on the apparent lack of action in the first few days are coming out. One helicopter was mustering cattle in Queensland when it got the call on Wednesday. It flew to Brisbane, was dismantled, stowed in a 747, flown to Auckland, reassembled and flown to Tauranga on Saturday morning. Not a bad effort. The Navy is here in force along with lots of Army personnel and some Air Force as well. These are all classed under NZ Defence Force.

Slow and steady wins

Rumours abound about the cause of the grounding. Reports from a source, which tracks vessel transponder position reporting systems, say the Rena altered course to head directly to the pilot boat at the harbour entrance an hour before she hit the reef.

Rena was reportedly running late to make the tide.

Normal seamanship demands laying off the new course on a chart or chartplotter to check for obstacles like Astrolabe. It's not rocket science!

Pumping hard

Pumping the oil is a long, slow and risky business. The sludge like fuel oil, which is heated aboard the ship, is cooling, making it even more difficult to handle.

Fuel oil systems in these ships are not designed to allow fuel to be discharged other than through the main engine (via it running).

The discharge hose is only about 75mm diameter so even in perfect conditions it will take weeks rather than days to get the bulk of the oil off.

There will be a quantity in the bottom of the tanks that will not be able to be removed. Add to this the angle of the heel of the ship, 21 degrees at time of writing, and the sea state and swell rolling the tanker taking off the oil.

Tidal flows and wave movement mean holding station off the stern of the Rena is quite a feat for the tanker.

There has already been a minor collision between the two. A tug is helping keep the two apart – we don't want another boat on the reef.

Exposed in a nasty place

Government advice is that the reaction time of the various agencies has been excellent by international standards and I guess it's easy to sit on the sidelines making judgements. This is an exposed offshore reef and in onshore wind and sea conditions can be a nasty place to be. Even in offshore wind conditions it's no picnic sometimes.

It's likely that more time will be spent waiting for conditions to improve than will be spent in productive salvage.

Keep in there

Volunteers and the community have rallied in exemplary form and some people need to understand that this will be a long haul with no easy quick fixes.

As the weeks turn into months it will be tempting to lose interest and this will be when assistance is needed most.

Smoothing the rough end

Back at council, business goes on. We've got the three year/Ten Year Plan to produce as well as next financial year's annual plan. This will be year one of the Long Term Plan (LTP). There is an objective to cut the rough end of $100 million debt out of the finances. Much of this would be Route K/Pyes Pa bypass debt. Other monies could come from sale of assets, slashing of capital budget thereby not borrowing more, amongst other things. There needs to be determination from all elected members that this will happen. Sometimes it takes tough tummy muscles to follow through and you shouldn't make exceptions for your favourite ‘wheelbarrow' and cave in to pressure groups, letters to the editor, perceived electoral advantage and so on.

In council, this resolve seems present when we talk about it, but when it comes to action there appears to be a bewildering wilting of stated resolve from some after public comment is noted. We rarely seem to hear from the silent majority.

This is a factor that is immeasurable, but giving credence to vocal (and sometimes anonymous) minority is not a sound basis for good financial decision making.

Keeping it sensible

Net gross external debt at August 31 was $361.6 million of which $267.4 million is ratepayer funded.

TCC debt is often slagged by detractors, but debt is the most sensible way to allow future beneficiaries of the infrastructure to share in the costs.

Put another way, why should today's populace pay upfront for amenities, services and infrastructure built for now and into the future.

Airport Committee reports an ongoing successful operation. It has held up well in the face of the downturn unlike our neighbouring airport operations.

New baggage handling facilities are in the budget for next financial year at significant cost – self funded.

Tauranga Airport operates as a stand alone account with no ratepayer funding whatsoever.

This week's mindbender from ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus – ‘Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.'