BREAM BAY GUARDIAN SOCIETY 

Update as at 14 Feb 2025

It’s been an interesting few days.

From being elated with the enthusiastic response to the “Save Bream Bay Sands” meeting at Noel’s place last Saturday to being really annoyed to see McCallum’s (MBL) barge stooging around Bream Bay taking sand samples. Then further elation to see Peter Hunt and Mike Tapper in a small boat safely sitting alongside the MBL barge eyeballing them just to make sure MBL knows that the close monitoring has started.

An update on progress:

An Incorporated Society (Bream Bay Guardian Society) is being formed now with the help of Fraser Sinclair. 

Officers of the Bream Bay Guardian Society have been agreed. These are:

  • Mary Sinclair

  • Bruce Copeland 

  • Malcolm Morrison 

We are also pleased to have Sacha Judd, and up to 10 other local community members/experts (a requirement of being an Incorporated Society) advising and working alongside us.

Discussions have been facilitated with several key people in the region. These include Ken Rayward, who has gained some notoriety for winning two consent battles with MBL over the Pākiri fiasco. What a great resource he is proving to be after years of fighting MBL about Pākiri and Mangawhai sand mining issues.

Workstreams are being developed that will contribute to an overall concise summary for Guardians and others, enabling many people to spread the word with a lot of facts to back up our assertions.

An interim bank account has been set up to accept donations. Our initial target is to have $30,000 to start various workstreams and to pay for expert resources where we don’t have volunteers with the required specialist expertise.

The account, detailed below, is dedicated to the Bream Bay Guardians Society. Please send any donations to: 

MORRISON, MALCOLM ROBERT & SINCLAIR, MARY ADRIANE
       BNZ Account: 02-0492-0280597-000

  • Particulars: Your Name

  • Code: Phone Number

  • Reference: Donation2025

We note that the Endangered Species Foundation (www.endangeredspecies.org.nz) is continuing to gather signatures for their sand mining petition supporting Bream Bay. If you would like to make a small donation to support the Foundation for this purpose, please add that to the reference line when you make your donation (as above). We will then ensure the monies are sent to the Endangered Species Foundation.


And here’s some information that will help you understand our situation and what we’re planning to do now:

A very well-respected economist is assisting us with establishing a rigorous review and demolition of MBL’s economic justification of having a consent to sand mine in Bream Bay. At this stage all we see is that there are no jobs, no economic improvements and certainly no increase in tourism and other business activities in Northland (let alone Bream Bay) from allowing sand mining here.

Ngāti Manuhiri have an existing consent for some land-based sand extraction at Te Arai and have a Fast Track application to increase this by 300,000 m3 per year. The application will include high quality land rectification/restoration, aquatic park, etc. This sand is enough to replace what MBL want to take out of Bream Bay and does not cause all the negative environmental effects that seabed mining does.

There is so much consented sand available from the Kaipara Harbour area that the extractors can’t even reach their volume limitations. Sand removal from the Kaipara does not have the same detrimental affects that it will occur in Bream Bay as Kaipara Harbour is not a closed system. Ie: more sand is coming into the harbour than is going out.

Kaipara Limited, a company that is run by members of the Drinkrow family have a long-standing and excellent reputation in the civil engineering industry. They used to have the sand mining licence for Pākiri but sold this to MBL because they realised the damage it could cause. Kaipara have since developed a manufactured sand facility that can produce up to 500,000 m3 per year.

These three sources alone will produce enough sand to exceed the demand in Auckland. Some large concrete producers in Auckland also have their own on land sand resources

The key reason why projects are selected to be on the149 Fast Track projects list is because of their contribution to the economic improvement for NZ. Bream Bay sand mining does not nearly meet this threshold.

One of the more notable resource/environmental lawyers in NZ has offered to work on a pro bono basis for us and coupled with a very successful legal litigator and our famous economist, we are examining where we can start shaking the legal stick at MBL. It may be very soon so watch this space. 

Workstreams identified so far include:

  • Relationships with local iwi and offers to help them where possible

  • Legal matters

  • Economics: Supply, Demand, Transport, Benefits for locals, Value of the best beaches in NZ, Costs/benefits

  • Science: Manufactured vs natural sand and affect on concrete (NB: Wellington region only has manufactured sand), Sand flows within Bream Bay, Environmental effects caused by sand mining 

  • Breaches by MBL in other sandmining ventures

  • Media including Mangawhai Focus, Bream Bay News, Advocate and Editorials in them plus other media

  • Consent conditions and monitoring

  • Form some linkages with all other Bream Bay groups.

And lastly; In the next newsletter we’re going to list some of MBL most atrocious breaches of consent conditions.

We’d welcome any further suggestions, from you and our community, about what else might be added this list.

If you’re out fishing, please feel free to go and have a look at MBL’s sand barge sampling the seabed in the middle of Bream Bay. Do not approach unsafely but they love people watching what they do. And if they seem to be fairly close to the shore, please push your GPS button and take a photo of the depth.

Go well.

Copyright © 2025 Bream Bay Guardians, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this e mail because you have agreed to stay updated of the actions and progress of the Bream Bay Guardians (www.savebreambaysand.org)

Our mailing address is:

Bream Bay Guardians

1210 Cove Road

Rd 2

Waipu, Northland 0582

New Zealand