Alasdair Abernethy recalls the day, 'five years come November,” that he first told Whakatāne District Council it would never work and was dangerous.

The council is now close to revealing its next move to improve the tidal pool at The Heads.

Alasdair first saw the pool when contractors removed the security fencing from around the freshly poured concrete box, near the mouth of the Whakatāne River.

"I walked to the edge, and I nearly fell in,” he says.

'I looked down and the slope was so steep, I almost lost my balance. I realised that this was a dangerous structure. And that was the beginning of it.”

The 91-year-old has been campaigning against the failed tidal pool since it's construction, with communications to the council and letters to the editor of the newspaper.

The council spent $870,000 on constructing the pool in 2017 to solve the tensions between boaties and swimmers jumping from the wharf near the boat ramp. Close to one third of the cost was donated by community funding agencies.

Criticism of the facility began soon after its opening because of the debris that was collecting in the pool and the dimensions of the steps leading to the water.

Adjustments have been made to the steps to the pool and it requires regular cleaning. The pool has recently been allowed to fill with sand.

The latest plan involves creating a ramp leading into the pool area and easing the slope of the steps.

But Alasdair is adamant the site can never be home to a successful pool, regardless of the council does.

The Edinburgh-born, retired civil engineer already had a long history of correspondence in the Beacon's Letters to the Editor pages.

His championing of the correct use of the English language has made his name one to be feared by junior reporters and sub editors for decades and he has not been shy with his opinions on matters of global and local concern - from questioning the evidence of climate change deniers to suggesting solutions for out-of-control children.

Approaching his front door with trepidation, it was a delight for this reporter to discover a friendly, quietly spoken and humble gentleman, with a hint of a Scottish lilt to his speech.

He left Scotland for Sydney, Australia, with his parents and brother and sister in 1947 when he was 16.

He gained a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Sydney in 1954 and spent time in Papua New Guinea in the 1950s with Brisbane company Hornibrook working on the creation of a small hydro-electric plant to supply Port Moresby.

After this he worked for large civil contractors McDonald Constructions in the B.H.P. steelworks in Newcastle and, in Melbourne, as branch manager.

Later he became chief engineer for a group of overseas companies constructing a large plant for the manufacture of polyethylene at Altona, near Melbourne, then as chief engineer at the Kelloggs factory in Sydney and later to become plant manager with a workforce of 600.

'Then in 1983 we moved to New Zealand and became farmers,” he says.

He and his wife, Althaea, bought a 10-acre lifestyle block near Tāneatua, later selling up to move into town in Whakatāne when Althaea died in 2012.

Alasdair says he has been told by another campaigner against the tidal pool, Sandy Milne, that the owner of the contracting firm who poured the concrete had warned the council there would be problems with the pool.

'He told the project manager, Mike Naude, that it wouldn't work. He was told ‘make it work'.”

He says it will never work.

'Not in that vicinity, because of the curve in the river. It is always going to fill with debris and polluted water on the outgoing tide and then on the incoming tide it will fill with sand. The water is only about 400mm deep at low tide, so it was only for toddlers. The bigger kids will still jump in front of the boats.”

'It's frustrating because they have never admitted that they got it wrong. They just keep throwing good money after bad.”

He recalls the date of November 24, 2017, when he first met with Mike.

'He just flatly refused to listen. It was too late anyway because the concrete was all poured. There was a big concrete box there.”

He has suggested bringing the low walls higher, to walkway level, and capping the pool to create an area for more play equipment. This suggestion has never been acknowledged.

As well as having his say to the council, and in letters, Alasdair has taken the matter to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and to Ombudsman New Zealand, which handles complaints and investigates the administrative conduct of state sector agencies but has had no success.

'I have been out of touch with anybody in the council for quite some time,” he says.

A letter he received from chief executive Stephanie O'Sullivan in March 2020 says staff will no longer respond to his emails.

"She put a ban on communication with me, claiming that they were spending too much time on answering my questions, which is a lot of nonsense.”

Alasdair was invited to join the Tidal Pool Reference Group, made up of a variety of community representatives including local hapū Ngāti Hokupū, Bay of Plenty Regional Council, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa, waka ama participants, and commercial users of the harbour, but wasn't interested.

'I knew at that stage that they were not going to listen to me anyway and I was quite cynical about the whole thing. They've only ever had one meeting to the best of my knowledge anyway and I don't think anybody listened to what they said.

'In mid 2020 they engaged a consulting firm and had an open meeting on site, where they got all sorts of ideas from various groups there, but they've never used any of it. I can't see them ever being successful the way they are going, because they are still trying to make it into a pool, but it is collecting sand.”

-Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air