The Advocates committee held their last 2014 committee meeting on the 22nd November 2014.

Our meeting began with a minutes silence in acknowlegement of the death of Walter Freitag, a valued committee member for the last two years. Walter was not an angler but thoroughly enjoyed the Tongariro River and its environments and was passionate to see the river environment maintained in as near natural state as possible.

At the meeting some significant decisions were made.

The advances in technology are bringing significant changes to the way business and communications are done and the Advocates committee will move with the times away from a paper society to a society that communicates electronically. The following decisions were made:

1. The Annual Report will be available as an electronic copy. It already is and all Annual Reports are on our website www.tongariroriver.org.nz under Library, Annual Reports. The intention is that the report will be available to those without internet access but not in the high quality print used to date.
2. The Annual Report will be professionally prepared as in previous years but will not be printed as in the past..
3. As in 2014 newsletters will no longer be published and we will depend on the Blog to communicate happenings of concernand interest to the Advocates. There will be at least 1 blog per month.
4. The recommendation to the Annual Meeting is that Subscriptions remain as for 2014.
5. Receipts for subscriptions and donations will be electronic’

Other key decisions made are

1. Mr Warren Butterworth was co-opted onto the committee.
2. That a recommendation to members at the annual meeting “that the constitution, article 6.4  be changed  from The AGM be held on Easter Saturday to a date set by the committee.
3. In 1915 the AGM is set for the 18th April, 2015.
4. Members are invited to all committee meetings. Our constitution allows for the committee (The Executive Committee) to be 14 members.
5. From the review of the Taupo Fishery (the report with recommendations is on our website) we are asked to feed back to The Taupo Fishing Advisory committee on what priority we want to the recommendations. Some things have been achieved. Others started. I will post the grid of recommendations on line in the next week. We would welcome your feedback.

The committee as a result of DOC restructuring had been given a room in the Turangi office for storage of our files and were able to hold committee meetings in The DOC meeting room. DOC have to find new premises by Christmas and as a consequence we must also find new premises to keep our files and a new meeting location. We have much appreciated DOC’s hospitality for the past 12 months. The committee room was ideal for the way our meetings are conducted both for space and for the electronic set up. We thank the DOC management .

The Fishery

I am optimistic that there has been a significant improvement in fish and therefore the fishery. Lake anglers are reporting numbers of fish with stomachs full of smelt. Not all fish are feeding well. This is resulting in fish of better size being caught although the majority are still less that 3lb they are nicely proportioned and conditioned fish. The 2015 season looks to have good potential.

Waikato Regional Council. (WRC)

The annual plan for WRC is to spray the willow regrowth in the areas cleared and to maintain vegetation in the floo path at less than 1.5 meters high. Work must soon commence. There is further work to be done on the stop bank between State Highway 1 bridge and  Herekiekie Street further downstream from where work was done this year.

Laurie Donald was the manager for the past 6 years and I found him to be reasonable, considered our views and was willing to work with us and other stakeholders. Laurie has chosen to resign in January 2015 having done his best to deal with conflicting interests. I enjoyed working with Laurie and wish him well for the future.

Anne McLeod is the WRC Taupo manager. Todd Baldwin is the manager of the Tongariro River and other rivers in the Lake Taupo Zone of WRC. We have already developed a professional working relationship with both.

Your opinions on the rivers are valuable to me as I sit on The Zone committee of WRC and can represent your views at those meetings.

The Genesis Tongariro Power Development (TPD) Community Consultative Meeting.

Neville Young and I attended this meeting in early November. Genesis is working hard to liaise with stakeholders and are genuine to know our concerns. Our major concern is that the company should monitor effects to the Delta and not to the Judges Pool.

This is where we see the Integrated Catchment Management Plan (ICMP) being such a valuable tool. There is good support from Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board (TMTB), DOC, Genesis, Taupo District Council (TDC) and from WRC. TMTB have asked to take leadership but ask that we wait until the Tuwharetoa Waitangi Tribunal claim has been settled first.

Its hard to believe that the longest day is next month and after that is the slide towards winter. May we have a glorious summer followed by a wonderful autumn. Winter seems to be maintaining a strong grip on spring.

Eric Wilson

Scretary.