Another project of the Earthwork Landscape Architects featured on their website here

A short biography of him is here.

We think the setting is the beach parking area in the Raumati Marine Gardens as there are no trees like this in Waikanae or Paraparaumu.

A Joel Maxwell story from last week.  It’s a bit of a shame that volunteers for this task are needed, but it’s the same principle as Neighbourhood Watch and Community Patrol which is there to supplement and not replace official law enforcement, see earlier posts.

Kapiti conservationists are looking to recruit a volunteer security force to protect the district’s marine reserve, saying the Department of Conservation is too stretched do the job.

Kapiti Marine Reserve is a 22-square-kilometre area around the Waikanae Estuary and Kapiti Island, in which no fishing, either from a boat or from shore is allowed.

But DOC’s single boat runs only about 30 hours of patrol a month, and Guardians of Kapiti Marine Reserve chairman Ben Knight said the department was essentially relying on an “honesty system” among fishers.

Read the rest

In fact two in different directions from the look of it: on the top of the Waikanae Boating Club; part of Karl Webber’s Groundtruth project

From the KCDC Facebook page:

“Our team were out and about today checking on our walkways – it’s fair to say it’s a wee bit wet out there. The Waikanae River tracks have had a wet weather hammering – parts of the track have been underwater overnight and now there are a range of humps and hollows which need to be filled. We’ve fixed a few today and we’ll be carrying out some work next week to fix up the rest but in the meantime please take extra care if you’re using the river paths over the weekend and next week.”

the Buick Street tap in Petone, see the stuff article

In our post on fluoride from February 2015 at the time of the Waikanae by-election, we said:

… fluoride salts are mildly toxic. For most people the very dilute existence of them in tap water isn’t going to cause them any problems, but everyone is different and there are some people who will be affected by it.  The scenario is the same as with the mercury that has traditionally been used in dental fillings: it won’t affect most people, but it does affect some people.

Fluoride can be removed by reverse osmosis filtration, but the systems are generally unaffordable for personal use.  Most bottled water as sold in stores won’t have added fluoride salts, but you have to pay for it.

On Monday’s episode of Fair Go (TV One) a home water filter was featured that was supposed to remove fluoride, but didn’t.  The price of this device alone — $100 — should have sounded an alarm bell about the likelihood it would do that.

It made the point, however, that there are people who don’t want fluoride in their drinking water, and unless you’re willing to pay for a reverse osmosis filtering system or buy bottled water from the store, there aren’t a lot of options — unless there is an untreated artesian source available.

The artesian aquifer at Buick St, Petone is famous for not just being free of contaminants, but for being good tasting water.   See this stuff article from April.  This will mean it has minerals in it as pure water is tasteless as well as being colourless and odourless.  But that is considered a good thing unless the minerals are so concentrated that it causes an unpleasant taste — the historic complaint in Kapiti.

The KCDC actually does has two such aquifers with public taps — one in Paekākāriki and one in Ōtaki (fluoride is not added to the Ōtaki and Paekākāriki water supplies as they don’t come from the Waikanae River).  Their locations are shown here

The other chemical that gets added is chlorine and it’s necessary if water comes from a surface catchment area as per the Waikanae River because of the risk of bugs like giardia; but you wonder: it if kills organisms, what effect does it have on you?  A standard carbon filter, even the one shown on Fair Go, should get rid of that.

And, of course, you wonder about pesticides getting into the drinking water like the infamous 1080…

We’re not impressed with the cost of bottled water — in the US you can get 5 gallon (19 litres) bottles home delivered for about $7 ($NZ 9.60), which should be enough for an average household for a week, but 50 cents a litre still sounds expensive and shouldn’t be necessary.  Here, Pak n Save has 1.5 litre water bottles for 88 cents, but considering you can get soft drink bottles there too for 99 cents, that still seems dear.