Spring Grove resident Rose Renton would rather be gardening, but instead she has found herself leading a campaign against Tasman District Council’s river management policies.
“It’s a massive regional issue,” she told Local Democracy Reporting.
Her home was flooded in both the June and July 2025 floods, losing a cat, two vehicles, and everything else in her house that was kept below hip-height, and now suffers from rain anxiety.
Following the floods, she launched her ‘Get Real on Rivers’ petition that urged the council to undertake more proactive river management practices to better protect the community.
Rose wanted to see more gravel extraction, better maintained stop banks and culverts, speedier responses to recovery and upgrade works, prioritisation of local knowledge, and greater clarity about how residents can conduct their own river management works.
“All rivers and catchments need maintenance, and the system that they’re currently working with isn’t working… If work isn’t done, our properties and, sadly, lives will be lost.”
She briefly stepped back from her advocacy due to the stress from it and her own flood recovery, but she recommitted herself following the smaller-scale flooding during this year’s King’s Birthday weekend.
“I didn’t flood, but what it did trigger is ‘I’m still unsafe. I could be back at square one. My property value will erode, and the walls are coming in.’”
She has put on several community meetings for concerned residents, such as in Wakefield and Tapawera, with later ones planned for Riwaka and Upper Moutere.
“It’s quite overwhelming. The emotion in the room… was significant and moving.”
She says that she has spoken with hundreds of residents and expects it to eventually become thousands. Her Change.org petition now has more than 1,170 verified signatures.
Rose presented to the council last Thursday, claiming that the organisation’s river management decisions were callous, negligent, and “grossly inadequate”.
“Your policies are harming our communities,” she told elected members.
Once her river meetings were completed, Rose intends to form an incorporated society to legally challenge the council’s practices if it did not start making improvements.
“We want some results. We’re sick of empty promises, and we’re sick of being ignored.”
Mayor Tim King said that while the council could mitigate flood events, it was an “unavoidable fact” that some people would be impacted.
“As much as I’d love to give people assurance that we can solve all these issues and that there’s simple solutions, there isn’t.”
He said the council’s role was largely to provide information about what people could do on their properties without a consent, and guidance on consent processes – something he acknowledged the organisation could do better – and to manage future flood risk.
However, the council only managed “a pretty small percentage” of Tasman’s many waterways, and it was the unmanaged ones that had seen much of the damage in last winter’s floods and King’s Birthday.
It was important people understood the risks when buying property, but Tim added that there was a little the council could do for those who currently occupied flood-prone properties.
“A limited amount anyone can do, really.”
Tasman’s river management was a constant point of tension, with some urging greater action and intervention while others were concerned about the extent of its river works, he said.
Tasman’s decades-old rating system was now being reviewed, with the council examining local rivers and catchments, comparing their size, activity, population, land use, economic activity, and infrastructure.
The community will have extensive input, but Tim warned that ratepayers could not fund management of all waterways.
“The current system isn’t perfect, but to come up with a better system is certainly not straightforward,” he said.
“Whenever you review rating systems… there tends to be winners and losers.”
David Arseneau, the council’s rivers and natural hazards manager, said the 2025 floods were “generation-defining” and shocked the system.
“The scale was unprecedented for us… In some of these areas, there is no going back to the way that it was before.”
Following the 2025 floods, entire rivers were realigned after they shifted, rock walls built, willows planted, and stopbanks repaired, but King’s Birthday set the recovery programme back with “a couple million dollars” in new damage.
He reluctantly described council’s current river management framework as “complicated”.
“It feels so trite… because there are uncomplicated parts of it, but it’s the system as a whole that is complicated.”
River works could have implications both up and downstream, so it was important projects were done right, but that meant it often took longer to begin than people expected.
“There needs to be a process and some checks and balances… but I certainly believe it could be easier and simpler.”
He added that the council’s approach to gravel extraction was not “ideological” and that more had been conducted this year than the year prior, but said it was required to maintain certain riverbed levels and that extraction was limited when there was no buyer.
“Where I can [extract gravel], I will, as much as possible.”
David says that the council was constantly balancing flood response and proactive protection and, despite the recent devastation, floods provided an opportunity to rethink what river corridors should look like to prevent future floods.
“We’re all wanting to go in the same direction. It doesn’t always feel like it, but I genuinely want the best for the people that live along the rivers.”
