A six-decade old ski club is preparing a wake after learning its lease on Lake Karāpiro won’t be renewed.
The Brooklyn Water Ski Club has been at the Taumatawiiwii Reserve since the early 1960s, but new landlords have announced the lease will be taken up by Karāpiro Waka Ama.
In a statement to members the clubs says it plans to end its tenure with a “bang” on the last weekend of the month. The club has been asked to evacuate the site by July 31.
It also revealed the club has been in dialogue over the lease for a decade with Ngāti Koroki Kahukura.
“More recently we have been engaged with Ngā Pae Whenua. This is the joint management body comprised of [Waipā District] Council and NKK representatives. We had only been informed in the last few years that we should be talking with the NPW as they are the ones who make such decisions, not the NKK.”
Members were told by the club that around 2014 a new waka ama group was also formed and some overseeing it were also part of NKK Trust. That group had a “pressing interest” in the ski club and despite efforts to find a way of cohabiting the club was told the new organisation was happy for the lease to run out.
Water skiing on Lake Karapiro
A second ski club operating on Lake Karāpiro is a short distance away at Horahora, but it is understood a merger is unrealistic because both clubs were already at capacity.
The club’s statement to members referred to chasing councillors for answers and immeasurable frustration.
But it also noted NKK and NPW “had ticked all the legal boxes required to have our club moved from the reserve which we cannot refute”.
It is understood the club built the facilities at the site and handed them over to the Department of Conservation at a time when Doc held the lease.
The termination of the lease was confirmed in a letter last week signed by Ngā Pae Whenua chair Johnson Raumati who wrote “we understand and acknowledge this is not the outcome you desired”.
NPW proposes to grant Karāpiro Waka Ama an initial term of five years for part of the reserve.
The ski club says it will freeze its funds.
“If we find a pocket of land to rebuild on the funds will go to this. If we are unable then donating to a worthy cause is the preferred choice.”
