The New Zealand Sevens rugby team had a great training break in the country’s sunshine capital last week – and a chance to enjoy New Zealand’s best beach.

Before departing for the last two rounds of the Sevens World Series in the UK, the 19-member team spent three days based at Ōhope, enduring one of Coach Gordon Tietjens’ legendary, torrid training camps.

All Blacks Sevens Manager Ross Everiss says the camp provided a chance to assess player fitness and prepare for the tournaments which should see the Champions clinch their 11th world title.

A free legal education service is to be trialled by Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi (the Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre) and Baywide Community Law.

Starting at midday on Friday, 19 April, a series of one-hour, fortnightly sessions will be held in the Little Orchard Activity Room and Atrium. Local solicitors David Sparks and Sheryl Overington will cover a range of legal topics, including wills and power of attorney arrangements; consumer law and your rights; employment law; Māori land succession; and the New Zealand Constitution.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council has applied for resource consent to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council and Whakatane District Council to remove and clean up sediment contaminated with dioxins from the Kopeopeo Canal near Whakatane.

The Regional Council is working with the community on the project, using a staged approach to remove, safely store and clean up the contaminated sediment using bioremediation. The method breaks down contaminants using a combination of fungi, bacteria and plants to degrade dioxin.

The Eastern Bay Canoe Racing Club’s goal of producing more international paddlers and growing the sport in the Eastern BOP are set to take a major step forward.

The following brings the water consumption/storage figures up to date.

The escarpment section of Hillcrest Road between George Street and Seaview Road will be closed to traffic from 9:00am to 4:30pm on weekdays between 2 April 2013 and 8 April. Motorists who normally travel to and from the Whakatāne central business district on Hillcrest Road are advised to use Gorge Road as an alternative route during those hours.

The patience shown by Edgecumbe residents during the current upgrades of the town’s stormwater and wastewater systems has been acknowledged by the contractors involved.

The projects are being carried out side-by-side to address issues relating to stormwater infiltration into the wastewater system in heavy rainfall events, which has resulted in wastewater overflows in the town.  The projects were included in the first year of the Whakatane District Council’s Long Term Plan 2012/22 and have a budgeted cost of $1.5million. 

If you hear a continuous siren sounding a Tsunami warning at 10am on Sunday 7 April, remain calm, it’s only a test.

Fire sirens located in coastal Eastern Bay of Plenty communities have recently been converted to provide a tsunami warning system, which will be put into action for the first time to coincide with the end of daylight saving. Whakatāne and Ōpōtiki District Councils are jointly managing the siren test, which follows on from the release of the Eastern Bay Tsunami Evacuation Information booklet earlier this year.

The use of sprinklers and unattended irrigation systems has been banned throughout the Whakatāne and Ōhope urban areas until further notice.

As from 13 March, garden watering can only be undertaken with a hand-held hose, between the hours of 6.00am and 8.00am and 7.00pm and 9.00pm, on alternate days. Properties with an ‘odd’ street number (such as 3 or 23) can use a hand-held hose for garden watering on odd days of the month (March 15 or 17, for example). Properties with ‘even’ street numbers can only water on even days of the month (such as March 16 or 18).