Today, the hearing on the resource consent application by Kaipara Limited to extract sand from the coastal marine area off-shore at Pakiri at Coastal Marine Area - Pakiri Sand Extraction - will begin. Hearings will be held Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th May, 2021 at the Warkworth Town Hall and Friday 7th May, 2021 at Omaha Marae (9.00 a.m. start) Monday 10th and Tuesday 11th May, 2021 at Pakiri Hall and Wednesday 12th, Thursday 13th and Friday 14th May 2021 at the Warkworth Town Hall.

Kaipara Ltd is seeking to renew its consent with Auckland Council which will enable the continued mining of 2,000,000 cubic metres of sand from a roughly 640 square kilometre area 2km from shore until 2023. The hearing will decide if this consent is to be renewed. Kaipara Ltd owns the consent, but the mining is done by McCallum Bros Ltd - a supplier of Auckland's concrete manufacturers, who also owns and operates a consent to mine closer to shore.

Evidence of significant ecological disturbance and multiple consent breaches have forced an Auckland Council review days ahead of the hearing. Evidence includes several kilometre-long, 20m wide trenches in the sea floor, repeated mining outside its legal boundaries and ineffective monitoring of the operation's environmental impact.

These breaches and ineffective monitoring have also been acknowledged in an additional report from Auckland Council, prepared for this week's hearing.

The council also acknowledged the existence of sea floor trenches but considered this of "low relevance".

Council compliance monitoring manager Amanda De Jong told The New Zealand Herald that there would be further investigation into any non-compliance and sea floor trenches. However, she said evidence provided by Kaipara Ltd claimed mining had been done as per consent conditions.

Local iwi, Ngāti Manuhiri vehemently opposed all sand mining applications, according to iwi settlement trust chairman Mook Hohneck.

"We don't believe that in this day and age, it's a necessarily good environmental outcome that we're sucking sand up off the bottom of the ocean," he said. Hohneck was "extremely disappointed" about the alleged consent breaches and said he would make his feelings known at the hearing.