Any unwanted material is spewed back into the sea and the sand is collected on the boat, which heads to central Auckland where the sand it sent off to local concrete manufacturers. Up to three times a day on some days, a sand dredging boat trawls up and down off Pakiri beach, vacuuming up the seabed. In New Zealand, the biggest and most current fight is over the white sand at Pakiri, an east coast beach north of Auckland. The Guardian, for example called sand mining “ the global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of” there have been books written, including Sand Stories by Kiran Pereira, there's a hard-hitting documentary called Sand Wars, and the topic engenders headlines like “The truth behind stolen beaches” and “Why the world is running out of sand”. Sand mining protestors on Pakiri beach in May. So when submissions closed last Friday on resource consent applications to dredge up to nine million cubic metres of sand from off the coast off Pakiri beach, north of Auckland, hundreds of New Zealanders found themselves part of what has become a worldwide protest movement. But mostly for concrete for new buildings. The topic is sand mining - digging up vast quantities of sand from beaches, or rivers, or off the coast, to feed an insatiable appetite for bridges, roads, glass, for re-sanding beaches and reclaiming land, even for electronics. There are people who say there is a technological solution and we need courageous leadership to change the entrenched model.Īnd in the middle are governments trying to make the right decisions. There are people worried about endangered birds and surf breaks and coastal flooding, and there are people worried we won’t be able to build the homes and infrastructure we need. There are entrenched commercial interests and passionate environmental and community protesters. In what could be some of the most important environmental decisions of next year, Auckland Council is set to decide whether to give a dredging company permission to take millions of cubic metres of sand from off the Auckland coast over the next 35 years - mostly to make into concrete. Environment Sand dredging: What’s yours is mined
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