NZ marinas reaching environmental benchmarks
Tāmaki Makaurau - Marina operators are working hard to minimize the impact they have on their local environments and eight marinas and boatyards received clean marina certification in Blenheim last night.
Auckland’s Westhaven marina was named marina of the year and it won two other awards.
The benchmark for environmental care in our industry gets higher ever year and Aotearoa’s older marina operations are making significant improvements to meet the standards and expectations of today.
And new operations must meet a very high threshold in order to be built and to operate. To achieve this, the industry is delivering a huge amount of innovation and attention to detail through its operations.
A number of additional facilities have taken the clean marina pledge, which means they are actively working towards certification within the next 12 months.
Operations receiving certification included Bay of Islands marina (Northland), Gulf Harbour marina (Auckland), Westhaven marina (Auckland), Whitianga marina (Coromandel), Whangamata marina (Coromandel), Tauranga Bridge marina (Bay of Plenty), Seaview marina (Wellington) and first time recipient Te Ana marina (Christchurch).
Areas such as the Coromandel and Marlborough Sounds are important natural environments that need to be cared for.
Marinas make a conscious approach to aspects like filtering stormwater and run off adopted as standard despite the significant investment for each operation.
Key challenges for marinas include filtering and discharge of water from its carparks and boatyards, discharge of wastewater from its customer vessels, energy efficiency, sorting and recycling of a wide range of waste, and marine biosecurity.
Lisa was born in Auckland at the start of the 1970s, living in a small campsite community on the North Shore called Browns Bay. She spent a significant part of her life with her grandparents, often hanging out at the beaches. Lisa has many happy memories from those days at Browns Bay beach, where fish were plentiful on the point and the ocean was rich in seaweed. She played in the water for hours, going home totally “sun-kissed.” “An adorable time to grow up,” Lisa tells me.
Lisa enjoyed many sports; she was a keen tennis player and netballer, playing in the top teams for her age right up until the family moved to Wellington. Lisa was fifteen years old, which unfortunately marked the end of her sporting career. Local teams were well established in Wellington, and her attention was drawn elsewhere.