Cooks government to protect vulnerable cemetery
The Cook Islands government is finally doing something about graves being washed away from a cemetery on the coast of the main island of Rarotonga.
Transcript
The Cook Islands government is finally doing something about graves being washed away from a cemetery on the coast of the main island of Rarotonga.
The so-called Brychyard is named after the disgraced cancer therapist, Milan Brych, who moved to Rarotonga in the 1970s after being labelled a fraud in both New Zealand and Australia.
Many patients followed him there and some were buried in the cemetery.
The bank that is supposed to protect the burial site is eroding and falling away, taking with it a number of headstones.
It's thought that about nine have been lost out at sea.
About three weeks ago the Deputy Prime Minister Teariki Heather led a meeting of agencies to discuss the problem.
TEARIKI HEATHER: And we needed a plan. And how we're gonig to sort of rehabilitate this area, and mitigation work. And now we've got the plan and again this morning we first discussed the plan with the agencies of government. And now we'd finally like to sort of address it and immediately where it has been scoured or eroded out the western side, so that's out approach and presumably, hopefully, the work will start on Monday.
BRIDGET TUNNICLIFFE: What will the work involve?
TH: Well, sort of like bringing coral again to secure that area and its rock-wall. The normal mitigation work that... basalt the rocks in front of the cemetery, that's been eroded away.
BT: So it will act as a kind of retaining wall?
TH: It's a retaining wall. Also it helps to break the energy of the waves. but all that area is vulnerable from one side of the seawall to the airport, to where the brickyard cemetery is. All that area is vulnerable to sea-surge. But this is the best we can do to try and mitigate, and put a break-wall, a sea-wall in the front by using the big basalt boulders.
BT: How much will that cost, do you know?
TH: Well, at this time, we haven't really costed... the whole project... which would cost, the whole area, about three-hundred thousand dollars. But we're not sort of doing the whole area yet. So we're doing just about fifty metres of this particular area that's been eroded badly. As you would know and understand, and everybody else, that the next budget will be like next year, it falls in July. So what we can do now is immediately assist with this problem but also look forward to getting a budget and also a plan to do the whole area.
BT: So initially, it will be 50 metres and that will be enough to prevent any more graves from washing away?
TH: Yes. What the government is doing is protecting the foreshore area, because that's crown land and government is responsible for that. But also assisting with those graves that have actually been washed out, to prevent any more washing out to sea.
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