Defiant town vows to stay put despite flood threat

Darrell Lightfoot in his silt-encrusted garden shed. Picture / Amos Chapple

As a stream of patrons make the afternoon pilgrimage through the door of Bill Hahn's Waitotara Hotel, he leans forward and slaps his hand on the table, "This is a bloody staunch town. The one thing that won't happen is this town won't be moved."

The long-term viability of the settlement has been brought into question after it became a victim of the floods that engulfed the lower North Island in February last year.

Of 47 homes in Waitotara, 41 were affected by the flood. Fourteen had to be condemned and three have since been removed.

More than a year later the community has rebuilt but is simmering with rage at a council which is now calling Waitotara a flood risk and proposing to move it.

The South Taranaki District Council says Waitotara has flooded three times in 15 years and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up.

The proposal to move the town was put forward by the council's manager of environmental services, Graham Young.

He says the council is listening to residents and voluntary removal of all or part of the town, while radical, is an option. "No one has ever moved a community before. I can say it's a very bold sort of long-term option to consider for council."

The council will meet to decide the future of Waitotara next month - proposals include restrictions on future building, designating the town a flood hazard zone, or voluntarily removing all or part of it. But most people in the township say they will not move.

Council staff have drawn lines on power poles suggesting how high people need to build their homes to stay safe from floods, homes have had their valuations reduced by Quotable Value, there have been protests, angry meetings in the Waitotara Hall and Mr Hahn has listened to upset locals swilling their beer at his bar since the whole furore started.

"You see I'm a bit flooded out," he says, tired of talking about it. He says the problem people have is the council describing the town as a drain on the rest of the district (the latest clean-up cost $700,000) and suggestions that, since the flood, rebuilding has been slow and the overall standard in housing has fallen since the floods.

"There's a lot of money that goes up the road [to Hawera] from here," he says, referring to the farming district that Waitotara services and the Richmond/PPCS freezing works down the road. "It's a bloody insult."

Over the road from the pub "flood" is a banned word in the Welch household.

Dave Welch and his wife, Gail, have lived in Waitotara for more than 30 years, raising a family in the town of about 150 people.

Mr Welch says proudly he only spent one night away from home during the floods which lapped at his decking and destroyed the couple's plant nursery.

He says the February floods were a one-off; other floods in the town had only affected one or two houses. The problem is the drains he says, which spew water during heavy rain.

Mr Young says the town's drains will be investigated by council but many of them were old, dating from the days of county councils or privately dug so they were not mapped.

Just off Waitotara's main street Darrell Lightfoot is still cleaning silt out of his shed.

A drain near the home he bought with his wife, Barbara, after the floods caused the whole property to go under - now largely cleaned up he asks where else could he have bought the three houses they obtained for just $32,000.

His properties have been considerably devalued by Quotable Value since the floods but insurance has not been a problem and just one, now completely cleaned, has been revalued at about $30,000. He says he will not move but adds the council is being more reasonable in making any removal voluntary.