But Raupo drainage committee chairman Ian Beattie would not be drawn on whether the diversion should happen.
The pilot scheme’s future looks uncertain after Kaipara District Council (KDC) blocked key next steps to split into smaller local groupings which will develop more localised adaptation action plans.
KDC will decide on what to do next with the pilot at its council meeting later this month, after considering a new staff report.
Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson said unspent funds from the council’s $1.5m climate adaptation budget would be better put toward the drainage scheme.
Raupo drainage committee chairman Ian Beattie would go only as far to say that any extra scheme funding would be welcome.
The Raupo drainage scheme’s then Raupo drainage board was set up by the government in 1905, and its £40,000 grant towards scheme infrastructure came soon after.
The Local Government Commission merged the board, former Hobson and Otamatea counties and Dargaville Borough Council to form KDC at the time of New Zealand’s 1989 local government amalgamations.
The Raupo drainage scheme is Northland’s biggest, covering about 8700 hectares. It has 70km of up to four-metre-high sea-facing stopbanks which protect the largely at/or below sea-level district from the Kaipara Harbour - the southern hemisphere’s largest harbour - and the Northern Wairoa River, which drains Northland’s largest harbour catchment.
Its network of about 140km of drains, 52 floodgates and a pump also manages flooding that comes via heavy rain in the hills behind the Ruawai Flats.
Ruawai's Ian Beattie attended the recent Raupo drainage committee meeting venue in Ruawai. Photo / Susan Botting
Farmers who benefit from the scheme pay significant targeted KDC rates, which roughly double their usual farming land rates. These are mostly used for scheme management and maintenance.
The joint ratepayer and KDC co-governed committee is about to start a multi-million externally funded upgrade - the scheme’s biggest in more than three decades.
Central to this is a $4.5m extra-wide floodgate across the currently 20-metre-wide open mouth of the scheme’s 19km-long internal canal towards the scheme’s south and known as G canal. This is to keep the sea out of this stopbanked canal. Early investigations into the equivalent of a 10km-long K canal in the scheme’s north are under way.
A funding application for the canal K floodgate project has been made to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC).
Major work will also be done to strengthen an area of the harbour-facing stopbank just north of Ruawai and visible from State Highway 12.
Conflict of interest
Beattie is also an assistant co-chair on the Ruawai community’s adaptive pathways pilot panel, which is about halfway through a two-and-a-half-year process of looking at risks, tolerances and next actions to be taken in the face of local climate change-induced sea level rise and other impacts.
He said he had planned to step aside from this assistant co-chair role at the pilot’s next meeting but stay on as Raupo drainage committee chair representative.
Beattie also started work at KDC as infrastructure officer - stormwater lead in October, on a nine-month contract working on urban stormwater rather than the drainage scheme.
He said his appointment was short-term, to cover staff shortages.
Beattie declared this conflict of interest at the start of the recent Raupo drainage committee meeting in Ruawai that he chaired.
“I am currently employed by the Kaipara District Council in a short, fixed-term role. Any views expressed by me during this meeting are my personal views only and are expressed in my capacity as chair of the Raupo drainage committee and as a representative of the Raupo drainage district targeted ratepayers.
“The opinions and views expressed are not in my capacity as an employee of Kaipara District Council and are not necessarily the opinions of my employer or the elected members of Kaipara District Council,” Beattie told the meeting.
“This conflict of interest has also been declared with KDC.”
■ Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
