Govt to include community consultation as part of flood risk categorisation

A group of researchers working on climate change and “just transition” issues in Tairāwhiti is welcoming a Government announcement there will be consultation with communities in the region on a set of flood risk categories for private properties.

Cyclone Recovery Minister Grant Robertson has outlined the three categorisations of property in areas affected by the severe weather events earlier this year.

The categories have been settled on under which the future of flood and landslide-affected properties will be assessed. They are —

Low Risk: Repair to previous state is all that is required to manage future severe weather event risk. This means that once any flood protection near the property is repaired, the home can be rebuilt at the same site.

Managed Risk: Community or property-level interventions will manage future severe weather event risk. This could include the raising of nearby stopbanks, improving drainage or raising the property (This category is split into three sub-categories depending on what work is required to make the property safe).

High Risk: Areas in the high risk category are not safe to live in because of the unacceptable risk of future flooding and loss of life. Homes in these areas should not be rebuilt on current sites.

Te Weu Charitable Trust has been working with communities in Tairāwhiti for the past 18 months to understand climate change and land-use scenarios for particular areas.

“So many of us are facing a precarious future in terms of where our homes are located, how we connect to the outside world in terms of transport and communications and what kind of work is going to be viable,” said Te Weu project manager Manu Caddie who lives at Makarika, south of Ruatorea.

“Residents and businesses in our catchment and across the region urgently need access to updated information on what the risks are for each property,” said Mr Caddie.

“The three categories seem sensible and useful, but we want to ensure the categorisation is based on accurate data from reliable sources.

That includes both external experts who know how rain and rivers flow, and local residents who know the specifics and history of rivers and streams in their area.”

Te Weu is working with a group of planning and environmental engineering experts from around the country on options to ensure residents in catchments across Tairāwhiti can have input on research and engineering priorities.

“We also need to be careful about how much engineering goes on. There was a lot of unconsented works permitted during the state of emergency with little consideration given to environment effects, let alone other impacts.

“As we’ve seen in Hawke’s Bay, stopbanks aren’t always the best option and we really need to understand what each river is likely to do in the future so that residents and landowners can make informed choices and accept that there are increasing limitations to how much we can control natural processes — especially in already highly modified landscapes.”

Mr Caddie said it was also important for communities and external decision-makers to understand how residents had been impacted in terms of employment and what the future of industry is going to look like.

“We have forestry contractors that had less than two weeks work in the first quarter of this year because weather events made access to forests impossible. The future of work in our region is another area that needs serious attention.”

■ Te Weu Charitable Trust is this week hosting Emeritus Professor David Norton who will be visiting land blocks and speaking at a public meeting on Thursday at Lawson Field Theatre.  Professor Norton has 40 years of experience in ecological restoration and the role of trees on farms and native forests. He has concerns about the practice of clear-felling trees on erosion-prone land and the rapid increase in pine plantations for carbon farming in New Zealand.