A mayoral thanks

On behalf of NPDC I would like to say sorry and apologise for the inconvenience caused by a damaged water pipe during ex Cyclone Gita. Sorry that homes in our district did not have water for several days.

Sorry for the hassle of having to boil water for a couple of weeks. And sorry for the extra time and effort that’s required to keep businesses running and customers safe.

We will learn from this experience and look to improve. In our 10-year plan,which we will be asking the public for feedback on, there is $120 million set aside for investment in water supply over the next decade to improve our resilience and grow our capacity.

But in the meantime, thanks for the huge support! Every cloud has a silver lining and what has blown us all away has been the incredible sense of community, cooperation and solidarity expressed by our people as we deal with this event.

Our people have stepped up. Calmly, efficiently, effectively, untiringly. There are far too many to mention them all so please forgive me if you aren’t on the list but here are a few who I had direct contact with that contributed to the response:

Taranaki Civil Defence, Fire and Emergency NZ, Red Cross, New Plymouth District Council staff, councillors and community board members, Police, Fulton Hogan, Powerco, Downer, Ministry of Civil Defence, Ministry of Education, Symons Transport, Taranaki District Health Board, Waikato Civil Defence, Maori Wardens, City Care, Taranaki Civil Contrstruction, Salvation Army, Waitara Lions and Hawera Lions.

Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern even got in touch and her Civil Defence Minister Kris Faafoi got up here to lend a hand, political rivalry forgotten about as he and our local MP Jonathan Young worked together to help our efforts.

But the biggest thank you must go out to our community as a whole and all the volunteers, far too many to mention, letting us know 80,000 people had our backs as we worked to get the water back on.

We still have a lot of work to do but one thing everyone has reminded me of in the past few days is what an incredible place Taranaki is, what resilient people live here and how much we can achieve when faced with a challenge.

Neil Holdom

New Plymouth Mayor