Demolished Jetty Was Unsafe Despite Seeming ‘Solid As Solid’

Wednesday, 19 March 2025, 7:47 pm
Article: Max Frethey - Local Democracy Reporter

The jetty on Best Island has been demolished due to safety concerns, surprising the man who built it.

Bill Ashton has lived on the island with his wife Frances for almost 40 years and he helped build the jetty with some other locals not long before they moved in.

While he acknowledged that he’s not an engineer, and that there was some corrosion on the structure, he said the jetty otherwise seemed “solid as solid” and was used by locals without problem as recently as this summer.

“It's been a very strong thing. In fact, we've had a number of big storms and things … it never moved.”

However, Tasman District Council performed a structural inspection of the jetty in November 2024 which found the jetty was “severely degraded”.

This is despite the council’s Coastal Assets Activity Management Plan 2021-51 saying that the district’s jetties were all inspected in 2018, and that Best Island’s was in “good condition”.

David Arseneau, the council’s team leader for rivers and coastal structures, said that past inspections of the jetty were simply visual.

The more detailed structural inspection completed in November found that the jetty was “unsafe” and so it had to be removed in case it collapsed without warning.

“There was no cost provided to repair it because it was just considered technically infeasible,” he said.

The jetty has served as a focal point for Best Island, providing a place for residents to jump into the water and swim, or to go fishing and watch fish and rays pass under the surface, or even to serve as a subject for paintings.

“It’s a shame, because so many people use it, so many people got all sorts of skills from jumping off it and learning to swim out there and all sorts of things … I was a bit sad to see it go really,” Bill said.

The jetty was also special for their family.

The structure was a constant throughout the lives of Bill and Frances’ children, with it eventually becoming a wedding photo location once they had grown, before becoming a favourite place for their own children to jump off and make memories.

“It was lovely to see our grandchildren have done it, and they’re getting older, but it was great seeing young families down there this year, still doing what we built it for: for our children to enjoy,” Frances said.

“The whole family is disappointed.”

After alerting residents at the end of January, the council removed jetty a month later on 24 February.

The council hasn’t budgeted for a replacement over the next decade, which would require a resource consent to occupy the coastal marine area, but the council would support community-led efforts to plan and construct a replacement.

Some residents told the council they would like to a see a replacement structure after the jetty’s removal.

“You need to put something back there,” Bill agreed.

“In the way of some sort of a platform or whatever else for kids and things to enjoy fishing off of … We enjoyed it and enjoyed immensely seeing other people enjoy it too.”

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