Yesterday, being bright and sunny, I was looking for something to do, and thought I might attempt to find the proposed location of a new water catchment dam on the Whakatikei River in the Akatarawas. Such a dam is one of three options being put forward as part of the Wellington City Council’s Draft Water Conservation & Efficiency Plan, which is being consulted on until 15th October. The other two options are to make everyone install water meters to encourage everyone to use water more efficiently, or to live with periodic water shortages in the region.

Unfortunately my plan didn’t work very well. I started with this great map (below) of the proposed dam site from page 28 of the plan’s PDF discussion document, and I think my admittedly slim knowledge of the Akatarawas didn’t help too much.

Maybe they thought nobody would bother to go out and try to look for this proposed dam site.

Wainui Stream.

From the map, I thought it looked as if the dam site was somewhere off the end of Bulls Run Road, a few kilometres off Provincial State Highway 58 between Pauatahanui and the Hutt Valley, so that’s where I started. The road’s nice, it ends in a gate followed by a short walk to an almost immediate stream crossing (not the Whakatikei — I think it’s the Wainui Stream). It’s actually a ford for vehicles, but still at least knee deep and today at least it was flowing quite fast, despite there not having been much rain for a day or three.
(more…)