Andrew von Dadelszen Former Regional Councillor

Now that most of the oil is off the stricken ship Rena, our attention turns to the containers. The 60 tones of oil remaining onboard could still pose huge environmental risk, but five weeks into this disaster we are re-opening most of our beaches – a huge accolade to the 16,000 volunteer man hours that have gone into the beach cleanup.

When I remember on October 14 watching those 350 tonnes of oil pouring onto Papamoa Beach in literally waves of oil, I thought that we would have our work cut out to get that beach open again within a year – not just six weeks.

So where to from here? The next priority is to recover the containers. There were 1363 containers onboard, of which 474 were empty and 11 were registered as containing dangerous goods. That first big storm saw 88 containers lost overboard, of which 56 remain unaccounted for. Only one of the 38 empty containers lost overboard has been recovered to date. With a bit of luck all 37 unaccounted for empty containers have now sunk to the ocean floor.

It is these empty containers that are most at risk of floating (either on or just below the surface), but given the time that has since elapsed it is more than likely that they have now sunk and are no longer a threat to our boating fraternity. The salvors will now undertake the equally dangerous task of offloading the vessel of its remaining containers. We only expect a daily recovery rate in the single figures, so it is likely to be many months (assuming the ship doesn't break up) before this stage of the operation is complete. I'm sure the naysayers will complain that things aren't going fast enough, but working alongside the Rena Incident Command team, I have only admiration. The level of collaboration is huge and the professionalism outstanding. The Bay might have been hit hard, but it can stand proud in what is a whole of community response.

If you have a view on these or any other local government issues, I invite you to email andrew@vond.co.nz