A still from a video taken by a local resident shows a digger at work on the beach at Church Bay, northeast of Whangārei.
Photo: Supplied

Two waterfront property owners have been fined more than $6000 for carrying out illegal earthworks on a Northland beach.

Reports of a digger moving sand and soil at Church Bay, in Tūtūkākā Harbour, northeast of Whangārei, on 10 February sparked a flurry of complaints from local residents and hapū.

The Northland Regional Council sent inspectors to the bay and ordered a halt to the earthworks, which it said were being carried out without authority on the beach and a reserve administered by the district council.

Regional council regulatory services group manager Colin Dall said one of two property owners involved had since been issued with an abatement notice and three infringement notices, or fines, totalling $4000.

A second property owner had been issued with two fines totalling $2500.

Dall said the abatement notice forbade any further unauthorised disturbance of the beach.

The fines were the standard amount set in the Resource Management Act.

Dall said prompt notification and inspection had stopped the property owners from carrying out further work, which would have resulted in more breaches of the RMA.

He said nature had since taken its course with the scraped area of beach more or less back to its pre-disturbance state.

Dall said the Whangārei District Council was also considering enforcement action relating to earthworks on the beachfront reserve.

At the time, one of the property owners told local media he had acted to prevent further erosion after January’s torrential rainfall, and believed the situation was urgent.

He described the earthworks as “hauling loose sand back up the beach”.

A spokeswoman for local hapū said she was “horrified” by the scale of the damage, which she described as covering an area as large as a rugby field.

The Northern Advocate reported that some locals lay down in front of the digger to stop it.

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