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Regional | Counties-Manukau

Wero Whitewater Park officially opens

Prime Minister John Key has officially opened the Vector Wero Whitewater Park in Manukau.  It is New Zealand's first purpose-built whitewater park.

Although King Tuheitia was scheduled to assist, illness had kept him away.

The Vector Wero Whitewater Park is beyond world standards according to CEO of Second Nature Trust Richard Jeffery.

"This is the new benchmark for the best in the world, and that's been told to us by people from all over Europe, from the United States, we've had a lot of people down here already looking at how do you build one of these because this is the best now," Jeffery says.

Jeffery confirms that consultation with Manawhenua was an important part of the process, in relation to discussing benefits for our South Auckland community especially our children.

He says, "The smaller river is called our tamariki river and that's for all our youth education programmes, so we're going to be getting up to 15,000 of our tamariki through the course every year, and that's a commitment we've made."

The Vector Wero Whitewater Park is open 7 days a week from 9am to 5pm.

The public has free entry.

Te Kāea reporter, Numia Ponika-Rangi was at the opening and has more on this tonight at 5:30pm.