The ongoing struggle over Matapihi access for the Tauranga City Council's southern pipeline project is going back to court.

A declaratory judgement is being sought in the High Court at Hamilton next Thursday seeking clarification of ownership of a paper road crossing an orchard and providing the $102 million pipeline access from Matapihi Road to the Te Maunga treatment plant.

Matapihi residents protesting the pipeline outside Tauranga District Court in 2014.

'We have applied for one in the high court. It's around the issue of ownership of the paper road at Matapihi where we a looking to put that link of the Southern Pipeline,” Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosby.

'The ownership was challenged by Tio Faulkner, so we want to settle that matter once and for all. We have agreed with the Matapihi community to go to the court and get a declaratory judgement.”

The pipeline affects three blocks. Trustee for the Ohuki-Matapihi Block Hayden Henry says the questions is how an ancestral pre-European pathway linking Matapihi residents with the resources of the estuary, became a council claimed paper road.

'It would have been the access way to all the valued resources we had in the estuary, the kaimoana (seafood), also Tamapahore the other major hapu along there, they had harakeke, flax,” says Hayden.

'Those would have been trailways to go to those resources.”

The paper road lies between the kiwifruit and the avocado orchards. Image: Google.

The existing Maori tracks and shortcuts then presented opportunities for the later arrivals.

''Oh here's a trailway, we might as well use this as a paper road', and that's unfortunately how it works,” says Hayden.

'How can you claim this as a paper road when before it was a paper road, it was an understanding, an agreement between our whanau, hapu, marae people that this trail goes back to relevant resources.”

The dispute over ownership of the paper road has stalled the orchard section of the project since July 2015, when Matapihi land owners blocked access and challenged council's right to use the land – and to cut down 12 producing avocado trees deemed to be in the way.

At that time Matapihi residents were not going to be able to connect to the pipeline. Owners complained to SunLive that there was no discussion with the council over the pipeline requirements, and that there was no incentive for them jump to the council agenda because they would receive no benefit from the entire project.

They took the issue to the Maori Land Court last October. In November, there was a hui with council staff that CEO Garry Poole said at the time was to obtain some clarification about issues concerning the paper road.

Since then the city council has consulted publicly on connecting the two marae, the school, kohanga reo and approximately 60 surrounding dwellings to the wastewater system via the Southern Pipeline with a value of $1,738,000, budgeted over two years.

Waikari Marae, Hungahungatoroa Marae, Matapihi School and Te Matapihi Kohanga Reo will not be charged for local capital expenditure, nor will they pay City wide development contributions and operational expenditure charged by way of the Wastewater Uniform Annual Charge.