Wānaka mooring owners frustrated by lengthy consent process

Mooring owners have expressed annoyance that a council process to gain consents for existing moorings in Lake Wānaka has already taken more than a year, with an end still not in sight.

Owner Julian Haworth, who estimates his mooring has been in the lake for more than 30 years, says the Queenstown Lakes District Council is to "blame" for the process taking so long.

"The council just needs to get on with it," Mr Haworth says. 

Mooring owners were contacted by the council in 2022 and informed they would now need a consent for their existing moorings in the lake due to changes to the council's safety monitoring regime.

A spokesperson for the Queenstown Lakes District Council says the council clarified in writing what was required to apply for a new consent. 

Mr Haworth says a group of owners quickly got together in response to lodge an application through a local planning consultancy company.

But, there's been no progress on the group application since, he says.

Lake Wānaka Yacht Charters owners Randall and Amanda Richards, who have a commercial mooring and a personal one, are quite angry about the process.

"We gave them the money, and there has been no communication from the council since then. We haven't received anything for what we paid," Mrs Richards says.

Her view is that they should be able to expect better from their own council.

Around 18 months ago, Mr Richards says 15 of the mooring owners asked to meet with council staff members for an opportunity to ask questions about what he claims has been a confusing consent process.

He says staff members were "rude" and "authoritative" at the meeting and did not let mooring owners share their concerns, and instead dictated the agenda. 

Whilst Mr Haworth thinks it's "totally legitimate" that the council is requiring consents as environmental monitoring procedures are updated, he doesn't understand what the hold up is. 

He expects the process to include consultation with local iwi as well as a hearing with a commissioner. 

Owners from this group have already paid $6,000, he says, but "there will be a lot more to come".

While some owners are have also expressed frustration that the council has doubled the cost of annual permit fee for keeping a mooring in the lake, Mr Hayworth is not one of them.

He understands that moorings fees have not been increased for a number of years, and thinks the value of a mooring in the lake has "substantially increased" during this time. 

However, Mr Richards says that doubling the consent is "disrespectful", and compared it to doubling a tenant's weekly rental fee overnight. 

A spokesperson for the Queenstown Lakes District Council says the council is continuing to work in good faith with all mooring holders around the district to alert them to their obligations and help them achieve compliance.

They say all moorings now require a consent, and there are no existing use rights. 

"We appreciate there are a few administrative processes regarding boat moorings on our lakes and that not all aspects may have been fully understood by all permit holders in the past, some of whom have used the same mooring for many years."

The spokesperson explains that the permit scheme has always required holders to have a safe and maintained mooring.

The new requirement of consent is essentially for owners to provide evidence for this, the spokesperson says.

"The fact that some boats have broken free on our lakes in recent years is a reminder about the importance of compliance."

However, the spokesperson says those who choose to remove any mooring from the lake rather than go through the consent process will most likely need to lodge a different application with the Otago Regional Council to do so.

Main image: Moorings in Lake Wānaka by Eely Point.