Frustration at the delay in emergency repairs on historic protection works in the lower Buller River boiled over yesterday as the Westport Rating District Joint Committee heard it had left Westport vulnerable to another extreme weather event.
File image: Buller River on 3 February 2022. Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
Last month the committee urged the West Coast Regional Council to fix rockwork protecting the eastern side of the town, along the lower Buller above O'Conor Home and the Organs Island cut.
The area, including diverting rockwork, was damaged during the July flood last year.
The council agreed in principle to emergency repairs but decided to tender some of the work to get a better idea of costs.
Yesterday, regional council operations director Randal Beal said test drilling was due next month on the historic river works and a report would be available by the end of May.
The Westport Technical Advisory Group would also be paying a site visit tomorrow.
Joint committee member and regional council chairman Allan Birchfield said he was worried about the delay already.
"I got the impression that rockwork was going to be started pretty quickly," Birchfield said.
Beal said the council had wanted to see an accurate budget to approve the work.
"I'm not happy," Birchfield said.
Beal said staff had estimated costs but they also needed to incorporate the impact of the new science around the wider protection scheme, incorporating the possibility of sea level rise.
"Things are going to change -- there is bottom line implications for all of these works."
Regional councillor Laura Coll-McLaughlin, of Westport, said she too would like "some pace" on the work, but it needed to be done right.
The rockwork for emergency repair had been "doing the job" for decades, if not 80 years, but currently "Westport town is at greater risk than July".
There was a lot of community interest but the need to 'ground truth' the existing rockwork via a geotechnical assessment was realistic, Coll-McLaughlin said.
Birchfield said he would have thought the work was urgent.
"It's a bit of common old garden variety rockwork," he said.
"Why don't you just hire a digger and pull (rockwork) back. We've been doing this rockwork for a hundred years or more -- I'd just like to get on and get it done."
Beal said it was "very clear" to council staff the work needed to be done immediately.
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
