Bluff drainage dispute taken to Environment Southland

A drainage dispute among Bluff neighbours led to a standoff with a 67-year-old woman physically blocking contract workers.

They returned in her absence and Jill Quaid and her husband Richard of 2 Pilcher Ave are now the unhappy recipients of water they insist is being artificially and illegitimately channelled into their property,

However, the Invercargill City Council has emphatically sided with the neighbours in a disagreement that is, in part, about whether man-made ditches constitute “natural flows’’.

The Quaids have now made an urgent request to Environment Southland to intervene against the actions of the council and neighbours on both Pilcher Ave and Gunpit Rd. Pilcher Ave runs across sloping land and an old drainage channel cuts across that slope, at the back of other properties on the avenue.

The couple, whose home is set further up the slope than its neighbours, insist that the drain did not reach into their land and that the water in it had flowed away from theirs – until a drain from a higher-up property on Gunpit Rd was dug down the slope, discharging into the ditch behind their immediate neighour on Pilcher.

The Quaids are particularly reproachful about the city council’s involvement.

“It’s actually a civil matter between neighbours,’’ Jill Quaid said. “They shouldn’t be involved in it – why are they wasting money on this?’’

The dispute reached the stage that on March 4 she stood defiantly on top of a concrete barrier to prevent Downer contractors removing it at the council’s behest.

She said the council had then called the police, who had arrived, declared the matter to be a civil one, and departed.

So had the workers, but they returned later that day to remove what the council insisted was a dam preventing the natural flow of water from Gunpit Rd on to their property.

The couple dispute this, maintaining their neighbours’ properties are the natural recipient of downhill water flows and that work to channel water into theirs was not consented as required.

A council-prepared Land Information Memorandum (LIM) report they consulted before buying their property showed no indication of any water flow from the ditch. Neither did Google Maps images from 2008.

They say their neighbours’ properties, but not theirs, are the natural recipient of the water flows from Gunpit Rd.

The Quaids have made an urgent request to Environment Southland, seeking enforcement under the regional water plan to prevent drainage work “which does not have resource consent’’ from causing flooding and erosion on their property.

Environment Southland has declined to comment while the matter is under investigation.

The council’s involvement appears to rely on the Drainage Act broadly defining a “drain’’ and a “watercourse’’ as covering every passage of water, and determining that a longstanding drain is something neighbours can expected to continue to operate.

Neighbours deferred comment to the city council, which provided a brief statement.

Infrastructure manager Erin Moogan said overland flow paths were a vital component of the Invercargill and Bluff drainage networks and the council had undertaken work “to restore the free flow of water which had been disrupted’’.

She declined further comment, saying further details were a matter between the council and impacted parties.

KAVINDA HERATH/SOUTHLAND TIMES Jill Quaid at the point where an old stormwater drain, until recently, came to an end at the edge of her Pilcher Ave property in Bluff. Later in the day, the concrete she is standing on was removed and in times of heavy rain the water will flood into her garden.