Work starts on fixing island slips

Southland District Council is using a mixture of traditional and green engineering to fix the series of landslips on Stewart Island.

Area engineer for Stewart Island Irwin Harvey said the 11 slips affected several roads and occurred three years ago during a large storm.

"It has taken some time to actually carry out the work to fix the slips because of several reasons, not least funding. We also had to consult with the Department of Conservation and Environment Southland about the introduction of the willow being used in the living retaining walls and we had to get resource consent from both ES and SDC," Mr Harvey said.

After geotechnical investigations, final designs were agreed on and six sites were approved for bio-engineering - the installation of brush-layer living retaining walls.

That work began in early August and is now close to completion, Mr Harvey said.

The traditional engineering solutions for the rest of the sites involve retaining and anchoring into base rock, with associated soil stabilisation and rehabilitation.

Meyer Construction Ltd was awarded the tender for this work and will begin in late September.

A total of $900,000 has been allocated to complete the remediation work of all 11 slips and Mr Harvey is confident the end total will be within this budget.