Flood work vindicated — Woodhead
YEARS of planning, hard work and multimilliondollar spending have been vindicated through the effective performance of the Lower Taieri Flood Protection Scheme in the weekend flood.
Otago Regional Council chairman Stephen Woodhead made that point yesterday as community organisations, including the council, and floodhit farmers and other people continued their work to recover from the flood.
‘‘I’m very pleased that the scheme has performed’’ as expected, Mr Woodhead said.
The council had earlier advised that the Taieri flood was the river’s secondbiggest.
A huge Taieri flood 37 years ago resulted in 1400 people being evacuated.
When a stopbank on the Waipori River burst on June 7, 1980, more than 8000ha of land between Waihola and Allanton, including Dunedin’s airport at Momona, were under water.
Mr Woodhead said every flood was different, making comparisons difficult. In 1980 the stopbank breach had had an impact not evident in the latest flooding.
But he understood the scheme had generally performed as expected at the weekend.
Since 1980 there had been ‘‘some significant upgrades’’ in overall flood control. The sche me’s performance was ‘‘good’’, given this was a sizeable flood.
And the overall outcome had been much better than in 1980. The airport was unaffected by flooding, and fewer people had to be evacuated, he said.
A great deal of planning, hard work and substantial infrastructural spending had been focused on flood control since 1980 and that investment was paying off.
He acknowledged some people had been badly affected by the recent flooding and it could be several weeks before floodwaters were pumped away from some dairy farms.
Support was available for farmers from several agencies, including DairyNZ, and he urged them to take the help if they needed it.
Council director of engineering, hazards, and science Dr Gavin Palmer said the former Otago Catchment Board and later the regional council had undertaken some ‘‘sig nificant upgrades’’ to counter flooding, and that work had also continued in recent years.
Recent higher water levels in the Water of Leith had had little adverse physical effect on continuing flood control work there, Dr Palmer said.
john.gibb@odt.co.nz