Govt support for recovery essentials

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The nature of central government support for our recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle and the other severe weather events of 2023 has become clearer after news this week that the five Hawke’s Bay councils have agreed on their cost-sharing deal with the Government for recovery projects and the voluntary buyouts of Category 3 risk-assessed homes.

That support will be less generous than our council had hoped when it put together a cyclone recovery plan requesting $555m of immediate funding and a further $613m to build resilience into the future. As the council, iwi partners and Trust Tairāwhiti finalise a “unified plan”, the message to them from the Government will have been very clear: focus on the essentials.

As well as a 50/50 cost-sharing approach to the buyouts of properties deemed unsafe to live in, because of the unacceptable risk of future flooding or landslide and loss of life, the headline figure to note in the Hawke’s Bay deal is a government commitment of up to $556m for recovery projects across Hawke’s Bay.

That figure includes $260m for transport infrastructure projects and programmes, $203.5m towards flood protection works (subject to design, interest in land and ability to build; and including $70m to fully fund a flood scheme for Wairoa), and up to an estimated $92.5m for Category 3 property buyouts.

The taxpayer and ratepayer contributions for property buyouts are net of insurance proceeds. Hawke’s Bay has 252 Category 3 properties.

Wairoa has no Category 3 properties but 684 classified 2A, so needing either community-level or property-level interventions to manage future severe weather event risk . . . which will no doubt come in the form of stopbanks containing the Wairoa River as it approaches and passes through the township.

The Tairāwhiti region has 40 properties assessed as Category 3, and about 1000 assessed as Category 2.

Gisborne District Council said on Wednesday that it would be in a position to take a proposal for cost sharing and buy-backs to the community within two weeks.

“Council has been in negotiations with central Government for the last couple of months and continues to work through the concerns and challenges that the cost sharing and buyout presents,” said Mayor Rehette Stoltz. “We understand that Category 3 property owners want certainty of time frames as we work towards finding solutions that are in the best interests of all of Tairāwhiti. The proposal for the Government’s buyout and cost sharing will impact on all ratepayers and this is something that councillors and the community need to agree to.”