Recovery continues two years after weather events

Kayla Birch’s employment as a river management officer for the council coincided with the North Island extreme wet weather events at the beginning of 2023.

River Management Officer Kayla Birch was initially employed by Waikato Regional Council to help rebuild catchment and community resilience against flooding in the Coromandel Peninsula after a series of extreme wet weather events in 2022.

Moving from Auckland to Whitianga at the beginning of 2023 to start her new job in the Hauraki and Coromandel Catchments Team, Kayla arrived a couple of weeks or so after Cyclone Hale and the week before the Auckland Anniversary weekend wet weather event.

“The Kopu-Hikuai Road was already down to one lane, thanks to damage from Cyclone Hale, and then that weekend the Auckland Anniversary hit and the whole road fell in – I was trapped whether I liked it or not,” says Kayla, who pretty much hit the ground running.

The council’s river management officers work with landowners to ensure the removal of obstructions from rivers and streams to reinstate capacity after flood events, and oversee protection works to prevent further erosion and loss of land in future events.

The Coromandel Peninsula, which has the highest rainfall in the Waikato, was already heavily saturated from events in May, July, October, November and December of 2022 when the North Island weather events of Cyclone Hale (10 January), Auckland Anniversary (27 January) and Cyclone Gabrielle (5-11 February) hit in quick succession at the start of 2023, causing road closures from slips and flooding.

“I was hired to help the team catch up from flood events in 2022, but thanks to ongoing series of events I was thrown straight into emergency cleanup works and haven’t stopped since,” says Kayla, whose contract was extended.

“Due to the saturation levels, every rainfall event caused slips and further road closures. A lot of the time we were left completely isolated, with three of five access routes completely fallen in.

“For a while there, every time it rained, people would get pretty anxious. It’s not exactly what I had imagined, moving to the Coromandel!”

Rebuilding resilience also creates employment opportunities for local contractors.

The team’s annual operating budget of about $400,000 was quickly spent on the weather events, along with an extra $490,000 from the council’s Regional Disaster Reserves.

It was estimated that the flood recovery work would cost more than $4 million, therefore take more than 10 years to complete; and, in the meantime, there would likely be more weather events compounding the issue.

Coromandel Zone manager Chloe Wilson says the council applied for funding from the Local Government Flood Resilience Co-investment Fund, which was set up to improve the resilience of communities impacted by Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle.

“We got a total of $1.68 million and have applied for further funding to continue our recovery efforts,” says Chloe.

“Our budget gets spent primarily on reactionary activities due to the frequent and intense rainfall events we get here, but having this funding means we’re now able to be a bit more proactive about future events by felling hazardous trees and doing large-scale channel capacity improvements, erosion protection works and stabilisation planting.”

Chloe says the work will deliver economic benefit by protecting agricultural land, key roading infrastructure and tourism.

“We’re also creating employment opportunities for local contractors, so ensuring that the economic benefits are felt within the community.

“When the state highway didn’t open again until December 2023, well that really hit everyone financially and mentally – the tourists stayed away, it drove up costs to move supplies and contractors around the Peninsula, and it really put a dent in community morale.

“We’re making sure that we’re as resilient as we can be for when the next big event hits.”