West Coast councillors fear they may not be prepared enough to avoid a similar flooding situation to Wairoa. Photo: Pool / NZME
Council liability based on the recent experience of the flooded town of Wairoa in Hawke's Bay is weighing on the shoulders of the West Coast Regional Council.
The Wairoa incident - the Hawke's Bay Regional Council's role in not opening a river mouth - is under the spotlight and was front of mind during the Coast council's meetings on 9 July.
Councillor Peter Ewen asked if council's new management staff were fully up to speed with which river mouths council was automatically allowed to open in an emergency across the region's 650km coastline.
"It will be helpful when we have these situations," Ewen said.
Council chairman Peter Haddock agreed, "given what has happened at Wairoa".
Ewen said he was querying if council was cognisant of a formal agreement with the Department of Conservation for over 50 waterways under their watch along the region's 650km coastline.
The question of liability after Wairoa came up again later in reference to the future of the Wanganui Rating District flood scheme in South Westland.
Council at a recent meeting for that district floated the idea of a $7 million co-funded improvement scheme. That rating district is currently on the basis flood bank maintenance only of assets previously accepted into the scheme.
But Wanganui ratepayers were not amenable at having to cough up between 25 and 40 percent of their own money for capital on the basis of the bulk being provided by the government in a co-funded scheme.
Haddock said the rating district needed to be fully canvassed about their future, including external funding under the Before the Deluge initiative and the new regional infrastructure fund, announced in the May Budget.
However, Infrastructure Governance Committee chairperson Frank Dooley said council needed to be "very careful" about protecting itself.
Even if the Wanganui scheme was turned down by those ratepayers council still had its own obligations to protect the public, "in light of the Wairoa incident," Dooley said.
Ewen said that council still needed to review its risk in those situations.
Dooley said council should "use Wairoa as an example" around liability and risk as it had to take a global view.
"We cannot be dictated to by ratepayers. We have to follow statutory and legal obligations."
Lew said he agreed "100 percent".
However, Lew said if he was going to commit to a further report on the reconfiguration of the Wanganui scheme then he needed to know those ratepayers were open it.
"If the scheme does not want to pay for a report to reconsider the scope of the scheme, and if that is not accepted, it could result in council writing to the government and asking for the scheme to be removed from qualification for future funding," Lew said.
Dooley said council needed to outline its own risk if the advantage of taking up cofunding for the Wanganui scheme was rejected.
Haddock said he tended to disagree.
"It is a maintenance scheme (only). We're asking that community to contribute to capital works," he said.
Resource Management Committee chairperson Brett Cummings said he believed there was tentative agreement from the scheme already for that.
Lew said it was not clear following the recent meeting.
"There was dissension."
He said to be clear about it, council needed to invoke the rating district's terms of reference, which was for a 75 percent vote in favour, "because we can't go on hearing only the loudest voices there".
If the rating scheme rejected "a redesign" then council could take the step of discharging itself of legal liability for the scheme, and let it wholly fall back on the landowners.
The professional staff advice was the current flood bank scheme was reaching the point of "catastrophic collapse" unless firm action was taken, Lew said.
Dooley said: "The important thing is we protect the liability of council and councillors".
Cummings said it needed to be pointed out to the Wanganui ratepayers that "the ad hoc way" the flood bank scheme had developed was now a contributor to their problems.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.