While other neighbourhoods might have a community hall or a coffee shop, Laingholm has the beach; this is where families and neighbours meet to catch up, enjoy their favourite water sports, share food and admire the view all the way across the Manukau harbour to Onehunga. So it was a horrible shock when a sign appeared on the lawn declaring that the beach was closed. The news was made worse when we discovered that the cause of the problem was a sewage overflow, and the closure would be indefinite. 

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The community quickly mobilised around this with a real sense of urgency. Some people wrote letters to the council’s local board and Restoration Ruatuna organised meetings with the responsible agencies. It was a relief to learn that Healthy Waters had found and fixed the broken pipes that were causing the overflow, but this was only the first step. We still had to prove that the water was safe for swimming, and if we wanted the beach open in time for summer, we had to get a lot of testing done in a very short time. It didn’t take long before Restoration Ruatuna, Safeswim and Healthy Waters had agreed on a plan: Healthy Waters had already repaired the pipes, the scientists at SafeSwim were prepared to receive a new round of intensive test results and Restoration Ruatuna tapped into the community and found enough volunteers to take the samples. We needed a team of people willing to wade out into the sea, two or three times a week, in the middle of winter, to fill sample bottles. Fortunately, we had no trouble finding enough people to fill our roster; it was amazing to see how many people came forward to put their name on the list. For weeks, at every daytime full tide, you could go down to the beach and watch one of your neighbours wade out into waist deep cold water, clutching a sample jar over their heads. 

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We collected over 150 samples of sea water and delivered each one to the nearest laboratory for processing. Finally, as spring arrived, the results were in and the beach was declared clean enough to swim. That summer was a special time for Laingholm, the beach was more crowded than ever on hot days and we were all very grateful and happy that our hard work to get the beach open for the holidays had paid off. The community seems to have a better appreciation for the beach now, so the whole experience was a big lesson learned for the future.