New Zealand launches environment recovery plan after shipping pollution

The New Zealand government Thursday announced a plan to restore the environment affected by the grounding of a Liberian-flagged cargo ship to its condition before the country's worst-ever maritime environmental disaster. The environmental recovery plan was needed to coordinate central, regional and local governments as well as community organizations in the long-term clean-up of oil and debris from the Rena, which ran on to a reef off the east of the North Island on Oct. 5 last year, said Environment Minister Nick Smith. The plan was expected to cost between 2 million and 3 million NZ dollars (1.63 million and 2.45 million U.S. dollars), but the final cost would not be known until the salvage of the wreck and the emergency response in the Bay of Plenty region was completed. "The grounding of the Rena was New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster," said Smith in a statement. "This plan has been developed to co-ordinate the long-term recovery and restoration of the Bay of Plenty environment. Our goal is to restore the Bay of Plenty environment to as close as is possible to it's pre-Rena state," he said. "This plan identifies the environmental issues for the beaches, seabed, water, fisheries, wildlife and management of waste and sets out who is responsible for the recovery and monitoring of each. A governance group has been established to oversee the implementation of the plan and to make sure everything possible can be done to restore the environment." Shipping authority Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) Thursday said salvors were continuing to remove cargo containers from the bow section of the Rena, which broke into two parts on the Astrolabe Reef earlier this month. Divers were inspecting the submerged stern section and parts of the surrounding reef to asses how to proceed with the salvage operation, said an MNZ statement. Two senior officers from the Rena's Filipino crew have been charged in connection with the vessel's grounding and the resulting pollution.