Wairoa is reeling.
These are times that have made some in the town question whether they want to stick through it, or up sticks and move somewhere else - somewhere where floodwaters don’t sweep away decades of memories.
But the people of Wairoa believe in their isolated community. They believe in its spirit, its potential and its “heartiness”. All they want is for everyone else to believe in them too. James Pocock reports.
The burden of multiple devasting floods is one the small Hawke’s Bay township of Wairoa can’t easily bear.
A cornerstone of Wairoa’s local economy, its sheep and beef industry, has declined for the past two decades.
Now the one-two punch of flooding in North Clyde after Cyclone Gabrielle, and flooding after last month’s East Coast storm which devasted more than 100 homes in the lower part of the Wairoa township has left deep wounds.
Management of flood control in the Wairoa River has been highlighted alongside the threat of climate change, with much more frequent flooding events likely in the future.
The most vulnerable must travel hours to either Gisborne or Napier to access key health services, with improvements only coming gradually.
Residents point to their many successes as an example of their community’s potential, whether winning rugby competitions or coming together with support for displaced whānau through their marae and community centres.
And with some outside help, they can still see a bright future ahead.
Sara Bird, Wairoa Community Centre manager, said the community drew on the strength of one another to endure recent hardships and achieve great things.
“If we keep working hard, we will still be pumping in 20 or 30 years,” Bird said.
The community centre has two indoor pools, a fitness centre and the highest indoor ropes course in New Zealand.
She said despite having plenty to keep people in the town around, the lack of health services in Wairoa was the biggest drain on the town.
“We lost Glengarry, so our kaumātua have to leave. They kind of don’t have a choice. If your whānau can’t take you into their home or if you’ve got something like [dementia] and you’ve got a young family that can’t look after Mum or Dad then they need to go away because it is not safe for them,” she said.
“Our whānau are having to travel away for treatments every week. We have a bus that leaves from Wairoa Hospital for those who need transport but sometimes it doesn’t work, we need our own services here in Wairoa.”
Wairoa Mayor Craig Little said his community needed a big investment from the Government to address the lack of local facilities.
“We’ve got no aged care facility, no IHC facility, we’ve got no dialysis, no dentist, we’ve lost all our banks, we’ve lost our racecourse through a decision made in the Government,” Little said.
For a community of fewer than 9000 people, Bird and Little both believe Wairoa punches far above its weight. They both referenced the appearance of a Wairoa team in three Poverty Bay rugby competition finals this season - premier, senior and women’s - as an example.
“People are coming home and sharing their knowledge,” Bird said.
“I was so proud. We are as good as anyone else and must never forget that,” Little said.
Lewis Ratapu, chief executive officer at Tātau Tātau o te Wairoa, was born in Wairoa and returned to live in his hometown about four and a half years ago.
He believed Wairoa needed housing, access to health services and good schools to attract people with diverse skills to the area.
“It is a little bit of a chicken and egg situation. You can’t grow your economy without a skilled workforce and you can’t attract a skilled workforce without the infrastructure to support it,” Ratapu said.
Management of the Wairoa River mouth bar weighs heavy on the minds of residents, but looming in the background is the evolving threat of climate change.
A report titled “Wairoa Cyclone Gabrielle Review” was commissioned by Wairoa District Council after Cyclone Gabrielle and released in April this year.
A section discussing the Wairoa bar pointed out that the river mouth has been manually opened since early European settlement.
According to the report, the bar had been manually opened 20 times before significant storms with nearly no flooding issues in the time Wairoa-based Hawke’s Bay Regional Council staff made the decision while working closely with a local contractor (Pryde Contracting).
Locals have been critical of the shift away from locally-based decision-making to staff based in Napier in recent years, pointing to the example of a local business The Limery which was flooded in November last year and June this year after not being damaged in previous events.
Luck meant the bar was open and in a good position during Cyclone Gabrielle and Cyclone Bola, but that luck did not extend to June’s East Coast storm.
The same report notes more than once that the frequency of flooding events in Wairoa will increase with climate change.
“It would appear the North Clyde area of Wairoa is exposed to flooding from events that are less than [a once in every 100 years probability] and that with climate change this risk will increase,” it reads.
It means that manual openings will be necessary more often and luck will not be enough to prevent flooding in certain areas.
Little said he believed the most recent flooding event was due to an error of judgement rather than climate change.
He said Hawke’s Bay Regional Council had not given the same level of focus to Wairoa as the rest of Hawke’s Bay when it came to flood prevention.
“The rest of Hawke’s Bay all have flood schemes, we’ve never had any. This time is the time to make a decision and make Wairoa the same as everyone else.”
A Business and Economic Research Ltd (BERL) report written for Pan Pac in 2021 titled “Economic and Social Profile of Wairoa District” found that the district’s economy had been stagnant for two decades in terms of employment, compared to the regional and national economy which had both grown.
At the time, 38% of all employment in Wairoa was in sheep and beef farming or meat processing. Meat processor Affco is one of the biggest employers in Wairoa, with its plant employing about 650 people during the peak season.
“This signifies that the Wairoa economy is perilously over-dependent on these two industries, and is vulnerable to a change in market conditions,” the report reads.
Ratapu said the over-reliance on the sheep, beef and meat processing industry was hurting the community.
“If [Affco] closed, we’d pretty much turn into a ghost town, so we can’t be a community reliant on one industry,” he said.
He said land use diversification was also needed for Wairoa to tackle the environmental threat of erosion from steep farm country in the upper catchment filling the riverbed with sediment and increasing the flood risk.
“[Sedimentation and erosion] is a direct result of sheep and beef country that should really be scrub native. Erosion also releases carbon, so it is quite a big carbon emitter.”
Tātau Tātau o te Wairoa runs a horticulture programme as part of its efforts to diversify land use and strengthen the regional economy and they also engage in riparian and scrub native planting on erosion-prone land.
BERL estimated that horticulture could generate almost seven times as many fulltime equivalent (FTE) jobs per 1000 hectares as pastoral farming for Wairoa.
“Differences in soil types and micro-climates might mean that Wairoa cannot achieve the same employment impact of horticulture in the wider region, but the potential to generate more employment from the land is evident,” the report reads.
Another fast-growing industry in Wairoa is forestry.
Hawke’s Bay Forestry Group chief executive James Powrie said the industry generated 55% more full-time workers per 1000ha than sheep and beef farming and delivered 63% more value per 1000ha based on a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Powrie said stabilising the landscape and building a more resilient environment would be key to the future of the district after Cyclone Gabrielle.
“Landowners, local and central government and the community need to be willing to work together to build a more resilient environment,” Powrie said.
“The planting of trees will be important for land stability and offsetting emissions; however, forest practices will need to adapt and improve in response to increased erosion and land use risks we face as climate change accelerates.”
Wairoa District Council had previously suggested that planting formerly productive farmland with trees had “significant negative impacts on the future wellbeing of the district” when arguing its case for imposing higher rates on the industry in a court battle, which the council won.
Little said forestry had not operated in a way which benefited the community as much as farming did, but he believed the industry was changing its behaviour and was working with the community.
“I want to work with forestry companies so we can work in harmony and never have to go to court again. It’s a waste of resources for the ratepayers and for forestry.”
James Pocock joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2021 and writes breaking news and features, with a focus on the environment, local government and post-cyclone issues in the region. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives in Napier. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz
The Christmas story also recalls another birth, John. This is why it all matters to me.