Papamoa residents concerned about a container recovery operation at Harrison's Cut are invited to a public meeting at the Papamoa Community centre on Wednesday at 7pm.

The council is agreeing to container salvage operator Braemar Howells using the cut to salvage rogue containers – based largely on the presentation to council made by Braemar operations manager Neil Lloyd.

Harrison's Cut is fenced off.

'It was a very informative presentation both for the elected members and a reasonable amount of the local community that were there yesterday as well,” says Mayor Stuart Crosby.

'It was just being quite factual about what's going to happen.

'Where we came to in our agreement as landowner with Braemar is when the site is not required and hopefully it will not be required often, it will be open to the public.

'That was the main concern because it is a very popular access to the beach. That was the key issue that came out of that discussion.”

The car park at Harrison's Cut was fenced off on Monday and has been in use during the response to the mid October oil spill from the container ship Rena on Astrolabe Reef.

'Where we have come to, we have agreed that is the site for the rogue containers that may slip off the vessel and end up on the coast,” says Stuart.

'The message was very much that it is an option of last resort.”

Neil gave councillors and Papamoa residents at the meeting a description of container salvage and oil spill and chemical cargo recovery company Braemar Howells, illustrated with some of the salvor's previous high profile jobs.

'They have other techniques to corral and harness these containers, and mooring buoys to latch them onto out in the ocean to be picked up at a later date,” says Stuart.

Harrison's Cut will be used to beach and recover ‘rogue' containers that fall overboard, and sunken containers that are raised and floated ashore.

Containers picked up from Harrison's Cut will be transported to a secure site at Te Maunga, which is being set up for decontamination, says Stuart.

'It depends on the state of the containers; each one will be assessed on its merits, structurally and what goods are inside, but they are very determined to make sure there's no disposal into the environment of the contents,” says Stuart.

'You've just got to get on with it. Sadly this has happened, so there is a bit of sacrifice by that local community in terms of access, but we will try and minimise it.”

Since October 12, 19 of the containers which fell off the ship have been recovered, 13 others have been located but not yet recovered, and a further 56 remain unaccounted for.

The containers since lifted off the MV Rena by Braemar are being taken by barge to Sulphur Point.

Harrison's Cut is intended for the salvage of the sunken containers.

The plan is to raise them, and float them to the beach near the cut where they can be hauled out and removed.
Braemar has undertaken works on the site preparing it for the proposed container operation.

These include erecting perimeter fences, removing speed humps and wooden dividers from the car park area, installing sediment control fencing and bunding around the site, extending and strengthening work on the boat ramp including the use of GAP 25 metal and geotech matting, and installing interceptors into the stormwater grates.