Who Waiōhine Action Group are
Shown here are some of the WAG Project Team picking up the Citizen of The Year Award on behalf of the Waiohine community: L2R Bruce Slater, Michael Hewison , Mayor Viv Napier, John Boon, michael Roera and Colin Wright. Not present: Mike Ashby, Andy Brown (GWRC), Bob Chambers, James Flanagan (GWRC) and Tony Waters.
The Waiohine Action Group is a large, diverse and growing number of ratepayers, including three past Councillors and a past Local Government CEO. It works for the ratepayers and communities of Greytown and those who live near the Waiohine river on its Carterton side.
Amongst the members are deep skills including expertise and experience in managing the Waiohine River issues, cultural and historical knowledge, relevant engineering and surveying of the catchment, actually maintaining the river banks and bed, running local District Councils and so on.
Some members have a heritage of many generations of knowledge of the mauri of the river.
The group have completed over twelve thousand voluntary hours of reading, research and contribution of findings relating to the draft FMP project and the draft plan.
Through consensus and genuine consultation, the group fosters openness and transparency to help the community, mana whenua and all stakeholdes investigate the good, bad and other work done on the old draft FMP by GWRC, understand the costs and implications and participate in a better outcome than the failed approaches of the last thirteen years.
If you are passionate about our river - the beautiful Waiōhine, then you are one of us. Email us and get on the newsletter list, follow us on Facebook, come along to our occasional meetings and get to know the project team that is part of your community, they value your opinion, ideas and input.
Community walkovers share knowledge, answer questions and give the community the opportunity to steer, guide and very often tell the Project Team what is needed for our river. The Project Tem then work with Greater Wellington Regional Council and other stakeholders to find ways of doing this that are best for our river and our community of communities. This is what a river walk-over looks like:
It all began with an idea. If GWRC could not build a viable river plan and could not reach an understanding with the stakeholders, why couldn’t the community lead a project to build a new style of holistic river plan that comes closer to meeting everyone’s needs and can be trusted within the bounds of a wide range of independent subject matter experts and community knowledge. GWRC agreed to this and it was codified into a written agreement known as the Terms of Reference by which the parties have conducted the project to build The Waiōhine River Plan.
