At this stage, it is hard to tell if the Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich’s intervention this week stalled the venture or rescued it.
It seems to depend on whether a majority of Dunedin city councillors had been minded to pursue a resource consent to get a groyne constructed at St Clair Beach or if they were far from convinced.
If Mr Radich read the room right, they were unconvinced. His hope will therefore be technical investigations turn into presentation of a promising possibility that can feasibly be backed by the council.
Several other interpretations of the debate at this week’s council meeting are available. The mayor lost his nerve and missed his moment, for example. Or putting off seeking a resource consent buys time to bolster the case for whatever type of groyne is generally accepted as the most suitable and likely to prevent sand being lost from the beach.
Perhaps a groyne might yet be acknowledged as a credible way to assist management of the coastline, among other approaches, and council staff, councillors and other decision-makers will be ultimately persuaded by its merits.
On the face of it, the discussion at the council meeting was perplexing.
A majority of the council had previously tried and failed to get the groyne built cheaply and now had the chance to proceed via the conventional route and commit to making a robust case for it. The mayor then promoted a course of action that was little more than the status quo, and groyne sceptics and everyone else signed up.
Mr Radich pitched this as promoting consensus.
He has seemingly taken heart from a different issue where he appears destined to be on the winning team.
A majority of the previous council challenged the view of the Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency board, that State Highway 1 should remain a pair of one-way routes in central Dunedin. More material on the matter came in and a comfortable majority of the new council backed the one-way system.
There was, of course, an election in between, but it is true two councillors went from flirting with two-way traffic to endorsing a modified one-way system.
Mr Radich cannot realistically wait for a more groyne-friendly council to be elected, so much seems to rest on the evidence for a groyne eventually being seen to stack up.
The expertise of a coastal engineer could be helpful to his cause, he hopes.
Further pressure from the public might yet help, too.
If a groyne ends up being reinstated at the beach, this will be a testament to Mr Radich’s perseverance.
In the meantime, it is difficult to escape the conclusion the forces against him are winning.
