The Ngākawau River is a river of the

West Coast Region The West Coast ( mi, Te Tai Poutini, lit=The Coast of Poutini, the Taniwha) is a region of New Zealand on the west coast of the South Island that is administered by the West Coast Regional Council, and is known co-officially as Te Tai Poutini. ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

. It flows generally northwest, reaching the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea (Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abe ...

at Hector. The New Zealand

Ministry for Culture and Heritage The Ministry for Culture and Heritage (MCH; ) is the department of the New Zealand Government responsible for supporting the arts, culture, built heritage, sport and recreation, and broadcasting sectors in New Zealand and advising government on ...

gives a translation of "the

shag Shag, or Shagged, or Shagger, or Shagging, or Shags may refer to: Animals * Shag or cormorant, a bird family ** European shag, a specific species of the shag or cormorant family ** Great cormorant another species of the family People Pseudonym ...

s" for ''Ngākawau,'' the

official name A legal name is the name that identifies a person for legal, administrative and other official purposes. A person's legal birth name generally is the name of the person that was given for the purpose of registration of the birth and which then ap ...

of the river since 21 June 2019. The Charming Creek Railway line used to run alongside Ngākawau River in the Lower Ngākawau Gorge, transporting coal from mines in the Ngākawau River catchment area. The disused bush tram track now forms a section of the Charming Creek Walkway. 3 km into the gorge, Mangatini Stream joins Ngākawau River over the 25 m tall Mangatini Falls. Parts of the Upper Ngākawau Gorge are the only known habitat of the rare daisy '' Celmisia morganii''. Ngākawau River is polluted with acid mine drainage and

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

fines from the

Stockton Mine Stockton Mine, on the Stockton Coal Field, is New Zealand's largest opencast mining operation. The entrance to the mine is at the former settlement of Stockton. Extent The coal field is situated between 5 and 10 kilometres linear distance s ...

. The proposed Stockton Plateau Hydro Project is expected to reduce the levels of pollutants. The Ngākawau Riverwatch environmental group formed in 2001 to address the water pollution in the river. State Highway 67 crosses the river about from the coast on a concrete bridge of 5 x spans built in 1983. It replaced a 1939 concrete bridge, which was built downstream from the former road-rail bridge on the Seddonville Branch.

References

Rivers of the West Coast, New Zealand Rivers of New Zealand {{WestCoastNZ-river-stub

See also

References