The Death of the Rangitopuni Stream

By Owen Aspden

Local resident Owen Aspden is a retired MAF biosecurity specialist and a respected member of Coatesville's community. Owen's efforts to help others on the night of the flood on 27 January prevented loss of life on at least one occasion. And as Sunnyside Road residents, he and his wife Carol have worked hard to clear and improve the section of the Rangitopuni Stream that borders their property. Owen's career background and keen interest in the environment give him first-hand understanding of what's taking place in Coatesville's main waterway. Here he shares his concerns about what's to come if we don't learn from the lessons of the past.

We knew little of the Rangitopuni Stream until we owned part of it. Choked with privet we worked hard to clear it from the stream banks to allow native plants to return which they did rather rapidly.

Our river track became a great asset and gave us access for pest and privet control and a place to walk the dog.

All of that is now gone. With three floods in a short space of time the stream is now wrecked with the last of the original forest gone or about to slip away forever.

We should look back 200 years and imagine what this place looked like with a large covering of magnificent trees, puriri, totara, kahikatea, kowhai, kanuka and many others and ask ourselves how did we destroy so much in such a short time.

I know that my grandfather was a member of the Waitemata Acclimatization Society and in the 1920s the group attempted to introduce trout into these streams, the Rangitopuni and Sunnyside were names mentioned, the streams must have still been clear at that time.

Early settlers used puriri and totara for fence posts and kaihikatea was used to make butter boxes for export, kanuka had no value and was mostly used for firewood.

During the 1900s a number of dairy farms existed here and cowsheds were regularly hosed down morning and night with effluent travelling directly or indirectly to the Rangitopuni Stream.

In recent years landowners and council have generally been