Council bills forestry companies as roads 'fall to bits'

A decision to introduce a targeted rate to help repair roads damaged by logging trucks is winning few friends in Taranaki.

Stratford District Council says the roads - some of which were designed for horse and cart - cannot cope with 50 tonne trucks and forestry operators need to contribute to their upkeep, but critics say the council has had decades to fix them.

Ian Coombe farms beef cattle in remote East Taranaki well off State Highway 43 - better known to many as the Forgotten World Highway.

He said the condition of Puniwhakau Rd was "diabolical", but he did not necessarily blame the logging operators.

"When the road starts getting small holes you ring the council and they may send someone out and then when the hole gets so big that we've seen logging trucks and trailers get stuck in the holes then they come out, so they're throwing good money after bad all the time. They don't act straight away."

The forestry companies were in the gun for the state of his local bridge, however.

"A logging truck came through, cut the corner and ripped one whole side of the bridge off.

"We've got to bring cows, calves and things across the bridge not on a daily basis but quite regularly.

"We've got to drive over it and it's 20 or 30 feet [six to nine metres] straight down off that side, so it's quite scary for my partner and other people."

Coombe said when forestry began in the area, the council told the operators 'you plant the trees and we'll look after the roads' - but it had not happened.

Now, the Stratford District Council is targeting the owners of 26 forestry plantations - aiming to raise $100,000 a year from them in rates.

In one case, the owner of a 4000 hectare plantation could see their rates jump from just over $4000 to more than $20,000.

No reprieve from logging, mayor says

Mayor Neil Volzke said the council had little choice but to act.

"Many of these roads were constructed in the days of horse and carts and they're still fit for purpose in terms of sheep and beef country farming where there's the odd cattle truck and the odd fertiliser truck.

"But the intensity of logging operations just makes the road fall to bits and they just turn into a muddy quagmire over the winter months."

The council had spent $1.5 million over the past five years repairing roads damaged by logging, which had meant general upgrades had ground to a halt.

Volzke said in the past logging operations would pause to give roads a reprieve.

"If we asked them to stop logging because of the road conditions generally speaking they would, but nowadays it's much more driven by the price of logs and if they have a demand and the price is right they keep logging right through the winter."

He said the council had spent money on the roads, but it was in constant catchup mode.

NZ Forestry manages about 8000 hectares of plantation forest in the Stratford district and 35,000 hectares across the west of North Island.

Its regional representative Cameron Eyre was not happy about the new rate.

"The issue from our end is that the council has known about the upcoming harvest for a very long time and they have done little to nothing pre-emptively."

Eyre said the industry was not against paying its fair share, but reckoned the council and forestry owners needed to work better together.

"With that collaboration we both need to come to the party and look at why the [roading] spend is so high and poorly done and see if there's other ways to manage it."

The new rate comes into effect on 1 July and will be reviewed annually.