Tēnā koutou katoa
Greetings to you all
The Tararua District was certainly busy over the holiday period experiencing record visitor numbers for many of our towns. This placed pressure on our infrastructure, especially for water in Akitio with the additional visitor use. It was upsetting to see the rubbish left at our beautiful reserves and New Zealanders treating our own country in this way.
This costs us all environmentally and comes at a cost to our ratepayers and communities. Our toilet facilities also suffered damage from vandalism, theft and disrespectful use. Council will look at the cleaning measures and consider increasing these during holiday periods. The Government will soon release some rule changes for Freedom Camping so that there is a greater focus on the environment and communities. TDC will then consider whether or not a Freedom Camping Bylaw will be developed to further help manage freedom campers exploring our district.
This influx of visitors was partially due to more New Zealanders exploring our great outdoors with Covid-19 restricting travel overseas. While our vaccination rates have hit 90 per cent, which is a great effort, our district still has 2,099 without their second dose and 1,442 eligible residents unvaccinated. Thanks to the teams working hard vaccinating our people as we head towards the opportunity for our children to be vaccinated and booster shots now available.
Water remains our priority with high temperatures and low rainfall throughout the district. Dannevirke and Pahiatua water takes are both below the towns’ usage and are being supplemented from storage. We have a dedicated response team up and running to focus and resource improving supply and demand in Dannevirke. You will see an increase in communication and information regarding water use throughout this period.
Please continue to use water wisely and report water leaks to council. The performance target for council’s response is resolution in five hours for urgent and 24-hours for non-urgent. These measures were successfully met last year, however leaks involving third parties can take longer to address.
Aroha pai Tracey Collis | Mayor