Jimmy Allingham

How easy is that?

Will that happen?

Do they simply return when the water comes back?

Because it has rained now since this dry lake bed was found.

It's actually rained a lot for the past two weeks.

And just checking in with council officials, they tell me that there's now 300 to 400 mils of water.

So the lake is slowly filling up again and the surrounding drains are.

So potentially the area may repopulate itself.

I think it's just too early at this stage to know.

Iwi have certainly been asking those tough questions.

I spoke to Pahia Turia, who's the chairman of the local runanga, and he said he just doesn't accept that this is a natural event.

He thinks it has to be something to do with the land use and the changes in that surrounding the lagoon.

And Horizons Regional Council says, well, the independent investigation that it's

really, really involved.

And we'll look at all of these factors to see and, in their words, make sure that this is prevented from occurring again.

Exactly right.

I mean, it's too early for them really to say anything while their investigation is still ongoing.

But going back to that report that I found from Doc, if we know and if there is some sort of pattern to when the lake dries out, that that might help inform decisions because the information that is readily available online that I found shows that the water level in that lake does go up and down.

In a relatively, at least from the information I read, a relatively predictable pattern.

But of course, if there's other factors at play too, that predictable pattern may have changed.