A plan to replace the decaying century-old pilot's wharf at Aramoana must be approved by the Department of Conservation (Doc) before it can go ahead, Cr Andrew Noone says.
Cr Noone, the ward councillor for the area, met Doc Coastal Otago manager Robin Thomas last month to discuss proceeding with plans to replace the wharf.
If the wharf was to be replaced or restored, plans would have to be approved by Doc because it owned the land the wharf was sited on, Cr Noone said.
At the meeting, Doc had said it wanted to assess a final proposal and check the possible environmental impacts of a new wharf, including those on the local New Zealand sea lion population.
''At the end of the day, it's their call, it's their land, so we can only provide them with the information,'' he said.
None of the concerns Doc raised at the meeting were ''insurmountable'' and Cr Noone believed Doc would be agreeable to a facility that was similar to the existing structure.
The proposal for the wharf was in its ''concept stage'' and it was hoped it would be finished within a month.
If Doc did not object to anything in the proposal, the next step would be to raise funds for the wharf, he said.
The council discovered only recently it owned the wharf at the end of the Spit. The structure has has had no maintenance in 10 years.
The wharf had been scheduled for demolition, but that was deferred while a local group investigated designs and costs for renewing it and how it could raise the money to do so.
