NZTA and Franz Josef farmers say south bank stopbanks crucial

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

By local democracy reporter Lois Williams:

Abandoning efforts to protect Franz Josef farmers from the Waiho River would imperil the West Coast’s famed tourist route – State Highway 6, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) is warning.

NZTA has responded to challenges from Franz Josef’s north bank ratepayers, who face big rate rises to protect their neighbours living and farming across the river on the Waiho Flats.

Businessman Logan Skinner and others have queried the point of spending $10 million in government and ratepayer funds to strengthen southern stopbanks, when the river clearly wants to head south to its natural flood plain.

But NZTA says the stop bank network on both sides of the river has to be seen as one joined-up system, including Waka Kotahi’s massive flood walls that run beside SH6.

“There’s no point NZTA raising our stop banks alone if any of the other banks protecting the state highway are lower," NZTA's South Island manager Mark Pinner said.

“Any low point in a stop bank upstream of the state highway could compromise the road, so we need to have joined up or consistently uniform design levels and construction for the north and south stop banks as a whole.”

NZTA was working with the West Coast Regional Council to look at longer term options for the road and the river, he said.

But in the meantime the southern stop banks needed to match the height of the northern ones to prevent overtopping if the river moved channels, Pinner said.

“This can happen in any larger flood, given this is one of the most dynamic braided river systems in the country.”

South bank dairy farmer Neil Frendrup said contrary to Skinner’s argument, the prospect of abandoning the Waiho Flats made no economic sense.

“We produce 391kg of milk solids a year from our farm alone, and I don’t know how much the dry stock farms produce but there’s a hell of a lot of food coming off the south bank.”

Frendrup’s 1000 cows feed on his 600 hectares of grass, but he lost 30 hectares of pasture to the river a couple of years ago, when the river came around the end of the existing Milton stop bank.

The 83-year-old was hoping to sell the farm and retire this year, but his hopes were dashed after the government ruled out a buyout of his $3.7m CV property, and others on the flats.

“Then there was talk of abandoning the south bank and no-one’s gonna buy land they think could be destroyed so like it or not we’ve got to be here a bit longer."

Losing productive farms was not the only risk involved of letting the river roam over the Waho Flats – it could also unleash environmental mayhem, Frendrup said.

“There’s an old rubbish dump on our side, and if the river got into that the stuff that came out of the old Fox dump would be nothing compared to the Franz one.”

(Tonnes of rubbish were washed downstream in 2019 when a flood broke open an old landfill on the banks of the Fox River, costing $3m for a three-year clean-up job.)

The idea of re-routing SH6 to the east and abandoning the Flats which had been suggested in the past, was also a bad one, Frendrup said.

“Doing away with the stopbank and putting the main road along the base of the Alps doesn’t seem very sensible to me, when the Alpine Fault is overdue for its 300 year major quake.“

After farming the south bank and watching the river for 16 years, Frendrup thinks the solution is relatively simple.

“They need to extend the (south side) Milton and Others stopbank about 200 metres and bulldoze a track for the river closer to the (north side) hill, going down to the sea so it can flow in a channel closer to the north bank."

West Coast Regional Council chairperson Peter Haddock said the plan to strengthen the southern stop banks was based on advice from its technical advisory group, which analysed years of reports on the Waiho.

“The experts advised that would give at least 10 years protection to south side community, while the Westland District Council did a master plan aimed at relocating houses as river gradually released to the south."

But the government focus had since changed from buyouts to holding the line with stop banks, Haddock said.

The council had lobbied hard and Minister Shane Jones had allocated $6m for the project, with all Franz Josef ratepayers asked to chip in $4m.

“The north side now has its stopbank but the south side is still vulnerable,” Haddock said.

“And it’s a large contributor to the local and West Coast economy.”

*LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.