Plans for town not yet decided

ALL options for the future of Franz Josef are on the table — including abandoning the stopbanks that protect the town’s airstrip, State highway and local farms, the West Coast Regional Council has confirmed.

Government officials have been scrutinising the council’s shovelready plan, announced before the election by the previous government, to spend $24 million raising stopbanks on the lower Waiho River and building a new bridge.

The council’s operations manager, Randal Beal, said all the options for the glacier town had been presented to the ministers in the Infrastructure Resilience Group (IRG).

‘‘There is an opportunity for the longterm plan for Franz Josef to be implemented sooner rather than later — within 10 years rather than 25 — that’s what they’re looking at,’’ Mr Beal said.

The present stopbanks were adequate to protect the glacier town for the next decade, but the council’s proposal to extend and raise the stopbanks would give it another 15 years on top of that to relocate north away from the river.

‘‘The town planning needs to be in place for that to happen, and it has already begun, but the IRG wanted to satisfy itself that there was a concrete plan to enable it.’’

One option under consideration was speeding up the relocation: if it could be achieved within ten years, rather than 25, there would be no need to spend more money topping up the stopbanks, Mr Beal said.

‘‘We would still need to raise the bridge and realign State Highway 6, but it would mean letting the river go where it wants to on to the flood plain on the south side. It would eventually flood the farms and the airstrip and other land on that south side.’’

That would involve coming to some arrangement with landowners, Mr Beal said.

‘‘So there has been a lot of scrutiny of how best to manage the situation facing Franz and we’re expecting a decision within a fortnight,’’ he said.