As the South Island’s “We(s)t” Coast continues to live up to its name, the flow of public money for keeping the locals dry is unabated
The government is pumping another $10 million into Buller as it recovers from the severe floods of the past two years.
Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty has announced the latest tranche of funding for the district in Westport.
The sum brings the total government recovery package for Buller to $100 million.
“The funding goes beyond the government’s usual financial support arrangements due to the unique set of circumstances faced by the Buller community, which lacks the resources and ratepayer base required for a recovery of this scale,” McAnulty says.
The additional funding will allow the Buller District Council to repair damaged infrastructure such as the Westport wharf, dredge the Buller River and help flood-hit communities to get back on their feet.
It will also pay for rock protection work in Reefton where recent floods tore a chunk out of the Inangahua River bank at the motor camp and exposed the old town dump further downstream.
One chuffed mayor
Buller Mayor Jamie Cleine is pleased with the $10 million cash injection.
“We got everything we asked for - the government’s been really good about this. It shows it understands our need and has faith in our councils to do the work we need to do.”
Westport - wedged between the Buller and Orowaiti rivers and the sea - has been hit by two major floods in the past year and was thrown into yet another state of emergency in February when a red rain event caused widespread damage to roads, bridges and farms across the district.
Buller had been dealt a rough blow, the McAnulty says.
But the additional $10 million would help the district get beyond basic recovery and into a phase of longer-term resilience as it coped with increasingly frequent and severe weather caused by climate change.
“The work also underscores the importance of the government’s proposed national adaptation plan, to support communities to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change, as well as a review of local government to provide support into the future,” McAnulty says.
Unlike the West Coast’s larger town, Greymouth, Westport has no flood walls and until last year it had escaped serious flooding since 1970.
But the recent events have put paid to any lingering complacency and lent urgency to plans for flood defences first proposed more than 10 years ago by the West Coast Regional Council.
Please fence us in
Most Westport ratepayers now support the council’s plan to ring fence the town with a flood wall and stopbank scheme that would cost them $10.2 million.
The project in its entirety will cost at least $26 million and the government has invited the councils to make a business case for “co-investment”.
But the final sum they ask for is likely to be much higher: the government has said the package must include further flood-mitigation measures that take climate change into account.
Options could include lifting existing homes above major flood levels, developing subdivisions on higher ground and buying out some landowners in areas that can’t be protected.
New stormwater systems will also be needed once the walls go up, changing drainage patterns in the town.
Cleine is hopeful the scheme will be approved.
“It’s all about relationship, and I think we’ve established a good one with the ministers and their officials,” he says.
“I’ve exchanged phone numbers with the minister. [Former Emergency Management Minister] Kiri Allan and I used to text all the time to keep in touch and Kieran seems like a down-to-earth bloke so I’m hoping that’ll continue.”
The draft business case for Westport flood defences is due out on June 23 and councils are set to sign off on their final wish list next week before sending it to Cabinet.
*Made with the support of the Public Interest Journalism Fund*
