4th August 2000

COUNCIL DESECRATES CEMETERY

With the report from its consultants, the Clutha District Council reveals that the survey carried out on the Waipori Cemetery involved digging holes in the cemetery area. The consultants, confronted with signals on their radar that they could not identify, dug down into the cemetery to see if in fact there were graves there.

Apart from the high cost of this extravagant three-day exercise, we believe it has been ineffective in locating graves, some of which are up to 140 years old. In the highly acidic soils at Mahinerangi, anything buried there is not likely to last very long. That includes animals that have died in the area over time, which were also not detected by their equipment.

In the presently used cemetery area there are graves no older than 1882. However, only 27 people have been located out of the 227 people known to have been buried in the cemetery since 1861. In the fenced area next to Kelvin Read's house, graves were known to have been present, but all headstones were removed some years ago when the area was used for planting swedes and running stock.

The Save Mahinerangi Society Inc. deplores this casual use by a district council of a public cemetery – just for the purpose, it appears, of justifying its illegal actions in allowing the construction of a house on public land in clear breach of the Burial and Cremation Act, and the Reserves Act.

Not only does Mr Read not own the land his house stands on, but he has stored gas bottles there in breach of regulations. Also, we deplore the use of adjacent land being used as his private dump and landfill, containing loose iron, concrete and other matter.

Mr Murray Burns, the council Regulatory Services Manager has said in the past that people building illegal cribs on land that they do not own is a "great New Zealand tradition".

We deplore the council taking the law into its own hands in this instance and call on them to tell Mr Read to forthwith, get his house off this publicly owned land.

Save Mahinerangi Society (Inc).