While it may be ethically wrong to muffle, shuffle or even disown damaging behaviour by acts of stealth, the policy's high success rate ensures its long life.
So it is that Port Otago Ltd with its Project Next Generation will next month seek to sneak under the public's nose the largest and most destructive single act of industrial dredging that the Otago coastline has yet seen, notwithstanding our city's proud reputation as the Wildlife Capital of the World.
The proposal, to scrape out the guts of the existing channel, sandbanks and reefs of Otago harbour with a suction dredge and explosives over as short a time as possible (24 hours a day, seven days a week), will result in about 7.2 million cu m of minced sea-bottom being dumped just over 6km off Taiaroa Head, from where it will gradually disperse across coastlines north and south of the deposition zone.
In its draft assessment of environmental effects, the applicant acknowledges "a plume within the water column affecting suspension feeding planktonic animals and birds and fish that feed on them", "an extended area affected by settlement of suspended sediments from the plume" and "physical covering of the benthic community within the disposal site and reducing away from the disposal site".
The last of these effects Port Otago describes further as a substantial loss, mitigated by the fact that the disposal site contains no sensitive or rare species that have been identified.
Neither Port Otago nor anyone else can be sure just how severe the impact will be for species further along the food chain.
How will the dredging impact on Hector's dolphins, Hooker's sea lions, yellow-eyed and blue penguins, and other seabird populations, including the royal albatross colony? What will happen to the salmon fishing? It is no use building a fishing wharf by way of off-site mitigation if there is nothing in the water worthy of catching.
In the history of Dunedin settlement, we have apparently dredged some 34 million cu m of material to date, so that this act might be described as a one-in-30-year event.
In reality, its closest relatives are in the late 1800s, which involved 5.6 million cu m of sea-bottom, and in the 1970s with the development of Port Otago, where an estimated 4 million cu m of bottom was removed.
Even those events took place over four years to a decade, whereas the current proposal is for a much shorter period of time.
In terms of sediment displacement, the proposal is the environmental equivalent of a new tall dam on the Clutha, Think Big foisted on to the undersea bottom-dwellers in the form of 2m of churned mud, weed, sand, reef and shingle.
In the harbour, fish, octopuses, sharks and birds will hopefully be scattered by sophisticated underwater noise devices before the gelignite blows up their reef-ghettos (hand-cleared of crayfish beforehand of course). We are assured that there are not likely to be any seals in the area when the explosions begin.
Predictably, the ceaseless grind for economic growth, in combination with other restrictive factors, have crafted the proposal's tight bottom-line, with its environmental collateral. Putting aside this bottom-line, it has to be asked first, why do we need a bigger harbour at all? Indeed, why do want this growth, if it risks destroying our environment? To pay for the stadium?
According to the application, "Larger container vessels are expected to call at Port Chalmers some time within the next decade and these larger vessels will require a deeper and wider channel in order to safely navigate to Port Chalmers." These shadowy super-vessels, moored just out of sight, evidently constitute an irresistible force of progress.
Even if we accept with the applicant that we must indeed reconstruct our harbour to handle super-sized container vessels, why can't Port Otago put the spoil in a selection of smaller parcels much further out to sea? Or, better still, on land? Or somewhere else (an artificial island perhaps)?
There are a host of easily conjectured alternatives that would almost certainly reduce the environmental impact of the proposed grouting and dumping. Why, for instance, can't the process be staged over a much longer period, to give the impacted environments more time to adjust?
The answer, in no polite terms, is money, though the applicant gives such reasons as variable sea-conditions, practicality, the diminished capacity of existing dump zones, and technical efficiency for their proposed methodology.
The deposition zone has purportedly "been chosen because of its suitability as a receiving environment based on detailed scientific and environmental studies".
In other words, jack up scientific authority to dump it in the ocean, alongside the whistle-blowing cops, effluent, unused tubs of industrial chemicals and disposable nappies. Out of sight, out of mind.
Two of the dredges proposed for use are the Machiavelli, presumably named after the Italian theorist of ruthless political expediency, and the quasi-imperialist-sounding New Era. More suitable names could hardly be imagined.
The process of public consultation undertaken by Port Otago has to date been underwhelming at best, at worst smoke and mirrors such as is typical of large applications under the Resource Management Act.
While the applicant has been in communication with obvious bodies like the Department of Conservation and Ngai Tahu, the prospect of turning Otago Harbour into a deep-water super-port has not yet been publicly debated at all.
Given the possible environmental impact, Port Otago ought to be seeking detailed, widespread public and unpaid specialist opinion on the issue by foregrounding the scale and real impacts of its project.
A full-page advertisement in the weekend paper should be only the start of a widespread public information campaign. In fact, the issue of a South Island super-port ought to be debated at a national level, rather than left to the competing self-interest of regional businesses.
As its trumpeting, Meridian-like title suggests, Project Next Generation is built on misguided corporate vision, in this case ostensible economic altruism. In shellfish-speak, that translates into widespread death, an underwater Pompeii.
Happily, it is not too late to stop or at least severely bridle this scandalously overreaching ambition. The proposal has yet to be publicly notified by the consent authority, Otago Regional Council. All lovers of Dunedin's wild seas should enter a submission.
- Richard Reeve is a Warrington-based snorkeller.
