Positive News – Flooding in Edgeware Gets Funding Boost

After several years of advocating for the community over flooding issues in Edgeware Village, local Innes Community Board member, Ali Jones, is pleased with news today that funding from NZTA has been earmarked to address the issue.

Jones says the ongoing and repeated flooding affects businesses, customers, employees and the wider community so the funding is very welcome.

“I read in the memo received this morning from CCC, that there is  $2.9m allocated to three areas in Christchurch – Edgeware, Sumner and New Brighton. The projects are called “mitigation of cluster flooding”, and I understand that the council officers submitted flooding projects based on “records of information from residents, businesses, roading maintenance teams and the known impact of high rainfall”,” says Ali Jones.

Up until three years ago, Jones says elected members didn’t realise that one of the issues holding back the addressing of these flooding issues in Edgeware was that there were no Levels of Service (LoS) for businesses affected by rainfall – only residents.

“As priorities go, of course homes affected by rain events must be top of the list however to not have consideration for businesses and business areas affected by the same rain events was surprising and needed to change. Our community board made adding businesses to the LoS related to flooding one of our priorities at the start of this term after I identified the issue,” she says.

Jones pushed for a board briefing following Peter Timbs Meats being flooded in December 2021, in the lead up to Christmas, and after Edgeware businesses had for many years grappled with the problem.

“I believed the issue had been addressed after multiple instances of water inundation but that was not the case.  Once we had the briefing, it was clear the matter was not a simple fix, and significant funding was needed to sort it. It was then the Community Board directed our local councillor to submit a funding request to the Long Term Plan process, which she did,” says Jones.

She adds that despite requesting the information earlier this week when the announcement was signalled on the CCC Coastal Councillors’ FB page (and not receiving it), she doesn’t know the specifics related to this funding announcement but looks forward to more detail coming to the community board very soon.

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