Whakatāne District Council is holding a public excluded meeting on Wednesday to discuss the future of its embattled boat harbour development.

Te Rāhui Herenga Waka Whakatāne Boat Harbour was conceived to provide 60 new commercial berths with a limited partnership formed between Whakatāne District Council, the Crown, Ngāti Awa Group Holdings and Te Rāhui Lands Trust.

In 2020, the Whakatāne council allocated $9.8 million toward the $29.7 million project from its Harbour Fund. The remainder is from the Crown through funding agency Kānoa.

Despite the project being officially opened in August 2022 with then Minister of Economic and Regional Development Stuart Nash visiting to help turn the first sod, the project has been held up through difficulties complying with resource consenting conditions. This is largely due to testing revealing larger than expected amounts of dioxin and PFAs in waste material dumped on the site in previous years.

Project manager Phil Wardale said in December last year that both the council and Kānoa had made it clear that no further funding would be made available.

As costs of carrying out the work had increased in the intervening years, he was asked to put together a Project Scope and Feasibility Report for the boat harbour, which the council will be discussing today.

The report is expected to contain plans for a boat harbour project with a smaller scope than originally planned.