Flood fears spark rebellion
Justin Johnstone got sick of waiting for council to protect him and his neighbours from flooding so he did it himself, writes Libby Wilson.
To Justin Johnstone, the piles of dirt in his paddock are a vital DIY flood defence after he and his neighbours got sick of waiting for council to act.
But to council it’s a vigilante move and the stoush could yet end up in court.
The Kaiaua resident says he built the stopbank by a stream on his land after seeing his land and neighbouring homes repeatedly flooded, leaving some residents with a $5000 insurance excess.
Waikato Regional Council asked Johnstone to stop while it works out the best plan for dealing with floods, and visited him ‘‘to determine the compliance of the activity’’.
After the visit, Johnstone said council wanted the soil gone by Christmas, and he was told they were ‘‘having good discussions’’ about an overall solution.
Council said the DIY stopbank was ‘‘under inquiry’’, and it couldn’t give further comment or a timeframe.
Speaking earlier, Johnstone said he and and his neighbours don’t want to wait for the next inundation.
‘‘We’ve waited long enough for things to be written and people to say no. They have passed it backwards and forwards between regional council and Hauraki [District Council] for so many years,’’ Johnstone said.
‘‘I wanted to do [the stopbank] because I knew it would bring it to a head.’’
Flood protection is expensive and complex, manager for the Hauraki Coromandel catchment Adam Munro said, and a wrongly-placed stopbank could make things worse.
Kaiaua is on the western side of the Firth of Thames, almost opposite Thames.
Though its most recent major flood was a tidal inundation, more commonly it’s water coming from the hills and spilling out of the Hauarahi Stream.
The bit which floods the township is on Johnstone’s property.
Johnstone had offered Hauraki District Council land in 2011 to help fix the problem, and this time decided to do it himself.
He told district council, which told Waikato Regional Council.
Regional council representatives attended a town meeting on Labour Day, visited Johnstone’s house, and asked him to stop.
‘‘They haven’t fronted the community all this time to do anything to fix it,’’ Johnstone said, ‘‘and to come along and stop me just shows their motivation’s all in the wrong place.’’
He was prepared to pay for the estimated 700m of stopbank himself, and said he was careful not to touch the stream.
He’s ‘‘quite prepared to highlight the issue’’, though he knows he could be prosecuted for not having resource consent.
Kaiaua is a high-rainfall area which has been hit hard by both tidal and river flooding, Waikato Regional Council’s Munro said.
Council is working on solutions, he said, but needed to do a site visit for more information and then to gauge what the community prefers.
‘‘We need a formal process in place, it can’t be done on an ad-hoc basis,’’ Munro said.
River management – for example, using rocks to protect bends from erosion – is cheaper, but a past suggestion in that vein didn’t get community support.
Regional council doesn’t currently collect rates for any physical work in the Kaiaua area, he said, but staffers attend community meetings there and know the landowners concerned.
Hauraki District Council’s responsible for Kaiaua’s stormwater system, not flood protection, group manager of engineering services Adrian de Laborde said.
Details of proposed work got a positive reception at the community meeting, he said.
Kaiaua residents Nicki and Jared Turton are among the first in line for flooding from the Hauarahi Stream, and the ones with a $5000 excess. They back Johnstone’s stopbank, saying Kaiaua folk are sick of worrying about the next flood.
Alex Linke had a close call with flooding in June, and said it affects the whole community.
Her partner Stuart Maxwell added: ‘‘Through Justin’s actions, basically saying ‘We’ve had enough’, it’s time for the powers that be to come together and sort something out.’’