Regional flood meetings 'a success'

Development on floodplains – particularly housing – has emerged as one of several key public concerns expressed during a recent round of meetings in flood-prone Northland communities.

The Northland Regional Council (NRC) has identified 27 catchments around Northland, most in the Far North District, as priorities for flood risk planning. It recently invited people living in those catchments to meet to update existing knowledge about - and help find possible solutions to – flooding issues.

Bruce Howse, the Council’s Land/Rivers Senior Programme Manager, says more than 350 people attended a round of 12 meetings as part the Council’s ‘Priority Rivers Flood Risk Reduction Project’.

“The Kawakawa, Helena Bay, Panguru and Whangaroa meetings were the best-attended.”

Mr Howse says there were several common themes raised by the public at the meetings: concerns over infilling of floodplains (particularly for housing) and a desire to tighten rules to prevent building in flood-prone areas; issues of catchment management and soil conservation; and a desire for an environmentally aware approach to flood-risk reduction.

“On the catchment management and soil conservation front, people were interested in initiatives that would help stop erosion-prone soils from washing into rivers, streams and harbours and contributing to silting and other problems.”

“People were also keen to see an environmentally-friendly approach adopted to flood-risk reduction where possible. “This means working with natural processes (for example allowing floodwaters to pond in some areas) rather than implementing costly, hard to maintain solutions like stopbanks, although obviously structural works like these will need to remain an option in some cases.”

Mr Howse says the NRC made some useful contacts at the meetings and also gained a greater appreciation – and heard first hand - of some of the risks within specific catchments.

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He says the meetings also yielded a few surprises, including people who came bearing very old flood information gleaned from newspapers and other sources. In one case, evidence was presented of 1820s flooding experienced by some of New Zealand’s earliest European settlers in the Whangaroa area.

Mr Howse says a number of people who maintain their own daily rainfall records also volunteered information at the meetings. While the Council had its own extensive monitoring system, private records were useful because rainfall could be quite localised and private records could add to the Council’s understanding of local catchments.

He says the Council will use information gathered during the public meetings to help develop computer modelling of flooding in the priority river catchments over the next few months and as part of risk assessment work too.

“Initially these will be fairly ‘big picture’ computer models, however, they’ll then be refined so Council has quite detailed modelling, right down to the likely depths and speed of floodwaters.”

Mr Howse says the Council gave out a number of questionnaires during the public meetings and urged anyone who had not returned them to the Council to do so as soon as possible so the information provided could be factored into the next stage of the priority rivers project.

Meanwhile, Mr Howse says the Council is grateful to those who took the time to attend the meetings and make suggestions. “They helped make the meetings a real success.”

He says the Regional Council will keep the community informed of developments throughout the priority rivers project.