Coromandel farmers to wake to slips
One-in-15-year storm leaves Hikuai road inundated, yacht beached on rocks
Coromandel farmers are waking up to what are expected to be extensive landslips after a one-in15-years storm at the weekend. Rain closed State Highway 25 on the eastern Coromandel for much of the weekend after flooding covered the road from Hikuai to Tairua.
A marine salvage operator is expected in Whangamata¯ today to pump water out of a fishing boat which listed to one side under the weight of the rainwater, sparking fears of a fuel spill.
The rain eased last night, but Thames-Coromandel civil defence controller Garry Towler said there were likely to be many landslips.
“Farmers will be mopping up for a long time and there are some slips and washouts on farms, especially on the eastern seaboard,” he said.
The Waikato Regional Council’s team leader for regional resilience, Rick Liefting, said the regional council, district council and NZ Transport Agency would investigate ways that the region could be made more resilient to similar future events.
“The rainfall total at one of our rain gauges at the Pinnacles on top of the Coromandel Ranges, as at 6pm tonight [Monday], was 520mm. That is approximately a 15-year return interval event,” he said.
“But there were a number of events which compounded over March and April 2017 which reached up to a 100-year event.”
The same low-lying area between Hikuai and Tairua flooded then.
“That’s an area where we are wanting to work with our partners to see how we can be more resilient,” Liefting said. “There may be some infrastructural changes that might be required. That would be further down the track. The first thing is to under
Farmers will be mopping up for a long time. Garry Towler, Thames-Coromandel civil defence controller
stand the rainfall systems that cause these sorts of events.”
Coromandel’s west coast narrowly missed being flooded. The regional council said at 3pm yesterday that it was “closely monitoring the Kauaeranga River and spillway on SH25, the approach to Thames opposite the sports ground. Should the spillway operate that will restrict traffic entering and leaving Thames. If the spillway operates it will be around high tide at 1500 hours [3pm].”
The spillway did not need to open and traffic was unaffected.
Liefting said conditions were too rough to deploy booms to prevent an oil spill from the fishing boat at Whangamata¯ over the weekend, but salvors were expected today.
“They will pump the freshwater out and ensure that no more diesel will escape as their priority,” he said.
“Because it is a light hydrocarbon, the impact on the environment is likely to be very low because it will dissipate quickly.”
A yacht was also blown off its moorings in Mercury Bay and ended up on rocks in Flaxmill Bay.
However, Auckland water utility Watercare said the rain was “not a drought-breaker”, only lifting Auckland’s water storage from 42.54 per cent of capacity on May 25 to 43.59 per cent yesterday. The normal level at this time of year is 76 per cent.
The MetService forecast today for Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty and Taupo¯ is for mainly fine weather about Bay of Plenty and Taupo¯, but cloudy periods and the odd shower elsewhere.