Artefacts find halts work on bad bendALASTAIR PAULIN Last updated 13:00 07/03/2012
Repairs to a dangerous corner on the "worst road in Tasman" have been put on hold by the discovery of possibly the most significant site of pre-European occupation in the top of the south.
Work on a $900,000 project to realign an eroding corner at Turner's Bluff on the road to Kaiteriteri stopped on December 5 when evidence of five kumara pits was found by contractors.
As required by the Historic Places Act, work was halted for 15 days but since then, many more discoveries have meant the project will not go ahead as planned.
The road was called the worst in Tasman by Motueka Community Board chairman David Ogilvie during annual plan submissions in 2008, when the Tasman District Council deferred work on Riwaka-Kaiteriteri Rd.
Kaiteriteri residents have been complaining about the windy road for more than a decade and several slips at Turner's Bluff overlooking Tapu Bay prompted the council to tackle the realignment of that bend.
A 2009 report commissioned by the council found a "very high threat" that an earthquake or rain could cause the corner to collapse.
The archaeological finds show that Turner's Bluff "was a site of dense occupation and there's a lot of artefact that indicate it was a significant place of abode," said David Watt, the central region area co-ordinator for the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.
"It could well be the most significant site of occupation in the top of the south."
Now the diggers have gone from Turner's Bluff and the fate of the road is once more in limbo.
"Council's position is that we're not going to put a road through a major Maori archaeological site so the alternative is either go around it or manage the issue we've got at that location," said TDC transportation manager Gary Clark.
He said a consulting archaeologist had found evidence of palisade walls, kumara pits, fighting platforms, defensive ditches and cooking.
About 530 "artefacts" have been found but Mr Clark said the vast majority of those are post holes from the palisade walls.
He met with all the interested parties, including representatives from the Historic Places Trust, local iwi, and the Turners, the owners of the land where the site was found, two weeks ago and has another meeting scheduled this week to try to find an alternative route for the road.
He said Oldfields contractors had lost about 10 weeks of work on the project and it could not continue as had been planned.
"Even if we got agreement on an alternative within the next two weeks, it would be unlikely to be completed before winter" but "we need a solution before the summer rush to Kaiteriteri".
He said if the road were to erode further, the alternative may be to make the road a single lane at Turner's Bluff.
Stephens Bay resident Anne Dorne, who has been making submissions to the TDC to improve Riwaka-Kaiteriteri Rd since 2003, said that would be"diabolical".
"I can see the position the council is in and no-one can blame them for that but I just can't imagine what it would be like to have one lane on a road that has 10,000 cars a day over the summer."
She said the issue was not just a summer one, with the number of permanent residents and commercial activities at Kaiteriteri growing.
She suggested an alternative might be the same sort of steel structure used on an eroding section of the Takaka Hill road at Eureka Bend in 2009.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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September 22, 2012, 08:57:23 PM