Our region is again in a State of Emergency after the torrential rain late last week. The worst damage has been in Tasman, but Nelson City Council staff and I have been working long hours through our joint Emergency Operations Centre since last Friday to support those affected.
The damage to farms, homes, roads, bridges and stop banks in areas such as the Motueka Valley, Tapawera, Tadmor and Wai-iti is extensive with some rivers topping all-time flow records. The hop industry has been particularly hard hit with the accidental death on Saturday of stalwart Peter Lines while clearing flood debris, and many hop gardens wrecked.
Nelson’s greatest problem is further slips from water-sodden land. A landslip above Grove Street in The Wood led to the evacuation and yellow stickering of one property. We’ve had 766mm of rain so far this year, compared with an average of 406mm. The good news is that our repair work on dozens of the landslips from the August 2022 event has held up well.
More than 50 roads were closed in the region including Rocks Road. We are working to open these as quickly as possible. A frustration of the emergency management team has been the co-ordination of road closure information on the NZTA and Council websites, which needs sorting.
We launched on Sunday a Mayoral Relief Fund with an initial $100,000 from Government to help families with immediate costs. We will be further engaging with Government to get support for fixing infrastructure such as roads, stop banks and the extensively damaged Great Taste Trail cycleway.
I have again lobbied Government about our need for a rain radar. My experience over 30 years with these weather events in Nelson and Tasman is that it is difficult to predict which valleys, rivers and communities will be hardest hit. A rain radar would better enable us to keep people safe and target assistance.
We are also investing millions, with good support from Government, in improved flood protection infrastructure. We were liaising last week with residents on our next big project on the Maitai River in the Hanby Park-Clouston Bridge area and will have this work underway next year.
