One of our major roles as a unitary authority is to look after the District’s rivers.
We maintain 285 kilometres of Tasman’s major rivers, including larger waterways such as the Motueka, Wai-iti, Waimea, Dove, Aorere and Tākaka Rivers, which collectively form our River X and River Y management areas.
The majority of smaller rivers and tributaries that feed into them have no active management or ongoing maintenance by us and make up the River Z area.
The effects of the recent weather events have been immense and have compromised properties and the landscape of areas across the District, next to rivers and waterways of all sizes.
As we move into the recovery phase of these flood events, we know that a long-term commitment to river work and community collaboration will be needed to repair flood damage and make our rivers more resilient to future floods.
However, we also know that work needs to begin right away.
We will be starting on a post-flood tree and debris cleanup programme on some of our smaller River Z rivers in the areas affected by recent flooding. This includes Pigeon Valley Stream, Eighty Eight Valley Stream, Pretty Bridge Valley Stream, Stanley Brook, and others. In light of the severity of this event, we acknowledge the importance of doing what we can to help in these River Z areas.
This work will be done in parallel with major river recovery work in the River X and River Y large waterways, following a similar plan of an initial post-flood cleanup and repair of the most vulnerable areas.