11 Ready to face foot-and-mouth Vol 20 No 30, August 8, 2022
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More room for rivers Neal Wallace neal.wallace@globalhq.co.nz
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OME riverbeds could be widened as part of an overhaul of flood protection management should the country’s regional councils secure a co-funding arrangement with the government. The councils are seeking $150 million of co-investment to assist with the maintenance and construction of flood schemes and to address what they calculate needs to be spent on protection works. Councils are spending about $200m a year on maintaining and building new flood defences, but with peri-urban expansion and aging infrastructure, more investment is needed. Graeme Campbell, the convener of the NZ River Managers Special Interest Group for Local Government NZ said that, if successful, the money will not just be spent on new or upgraded stock banks but in some cases on widening riverbeds, land use change and spatial planning. Some rivers have been strangled by flood protection works and will not deal with the more frequent heavy rain events expected in the future. Schemes designed to protect farmland are now required to provide protection for periurban development, such as those adjacent to the Ashley, Waimakariri and Selwyn rivers in Canterbury. “If we are to deal with flooding challenges in the future, our rivers
REALIGNMENT: Councillor Ian Mackenzie on the north branch of the Ashburton River, at the spot where Environment Canterbury is looking to reclaim land to widen the riverbed.
are going to need more room and that is part of what we have got to address,” Campbell said. Meeting higher water quality standards also requires a new approach to flood protection works. ECan councillor Ian Mackenzie said council engineers are considering the merits of widening the north branch of the Ashburton River, which 20 years ago was narrowed so the force of
water would wash gravel deposits downstream. Options being considered include using 60ha of leased land and acquiring 40ha of private farmland to redevelop the stop bank further back from the river, widening the bed to slow the speed of the water and allow gravel to be dispersed over a wider but more accessible area. Mackenzie said flood schemes have been piecemeal and not
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kept pace with peri-urban developments, so need extension or strengthening to provide protection. “The level of protection is not sufficient to protect urban expansion, there is a different level of expectation,” Mackenzie said. Campbell said the government stopped funding flood protection work in the 1980s, even though schemes protect government assets and infrastructure.
A report on the proposal by regional councils for the government estimates an extra $10m-$20m of flood protection would have saved $100m in damage in and around Westport from recent flooding. “The 2021 Canterbury, Westport
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