Shortage of rock stalls river repair
Environment Southland is having difficulty in getting rock from quarries to carry out erosion repair work on Southland’s rivers.
At a Mataura river liaison committee meeting at Riversdale on Thursday, farmers vented their frustrations about the amount of time it was taking the regional council to carry out repair work, after two record floods in the catchment – one in February 2020 and the other in January this year.
But the regional council’s catchment team leader, David Connor, said the availability of rock was a problem.
The council had $1 million of rock works to complete on its books and it had to prioritise what it did.
‘‘We can only get so much out of the Pyramid Quarry, and there are only certain times of the year we can do it. It’s not quite as easy as you think,’’ Connor said.
One farmer told council staff that if they did the work in a timely matter, the work wouldn’t be ‘‘three times as big’’.
‘‘You need more money, and more machines on the ground to get the job done.’’
Council staff would follow up with quarries about the availability of more rock, and an amendment was passed to increase the expenditure on rock stability work.
Some farmers also wanted gravel removed from riverbeds because it was causing trees to fall into rivers and fences to be washed out.
The council was in the process of applying for a global consent for gravel extraction, but council catchment operations manager Paddy Haynes said the issue wasn’t as simple as removing build-ups from riverbeds.
‘‘Where’s it going to and who’s going to want it?’’ he said.
‘‘There are some big challenges for us, and we need to be smarter about how we’re best to do it.’’
The council wanted to carry out Lidar surveys over riverbeds so it could tell if the amount of gravel in them had increased.
Farmers were advised that they could drive machinery into rivers to remove debris after a flood as a permitted issue, but gravel was not considered to be debris, Haynes said.
Attendees at the meeting voted that the regional council should approve funding to employ another river works supervisor, who could help farmers address issues.
Environment Southland had postponed meetings for the Te Anau and Waiau catchments when Covid19 alert level 2 restrictions were put in place. The council would advise of a new date for them to be held.