On Wednesday night the HBRC conducted a live videostream on its Facebook page to explain its stopbank and flood protection work in response to Cyclone Gabrielle.
HBRC was represented by Chair Hinewai Ormsby and the senior staffer responsible for asset management, Chris Dolley.
The two of them, chiefly expert Dolley, responded to questions from the audience, in the neighbourhood of 400 ‘live’ viewers.
Apparently this public engagement was in response to some incredible claims being made about HBRC’s handling of the disaster flooding at a contentious meeting recently with residents from the Puketapu area. These claims ranged from charges that the HBRC deliberately blew up certain stopbanks to advantage one area over another, to charges that HBRC was hiding dead bodies to avoid true accounting of the catastrophe.
Such was the misinformation coming out of that meeting that HBRC felt compelled to issue a media release on 4 April titled: Stopbank misinformation needs to stop. Here’s the release.
Wow! What fantasizing a disaster can cause as it injures people, their well-being and its aftermath rubs salt into the wound.
Regular readers of BayBuzz know I’m no apologist for HBRC or any HB council. I’m a confirmed skeptic when it comes to councils’ accountability.
That said, in this case, to its credit, HBRC stepped up to calmly and publicly explain its actions (the ones it actually did take), the reasoning behind them, and the complexity of the task ahead – both to re-establish protections in the short term and to plan for better future resilience. The questions viewers posed were well-answered, albeit in a format that didn’t allow for ‘push back’ on some responses. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with some answers, but neither did I believe that HBRC was being evasive, deceitful or trying to sugar coat the challenges ahead.
To decide for yourself, you can view the discussion here.
So, I give them good marks for fronting up in this way, even as I wrestle with them on other issues.
The choices that will need to be made about flood management will be highly vexatious, especially if the issues are considered through a long lens that properly takes into account the future weather impacts of climate change.
This debate is just beginning.
Rivers flood unpredictably. Build on high ground. Sow alluvial soils. End of.
One of the problems the HBRC has to address urgently, Is when the rivers in seriously high flooding, the full size trees roots and all, tearing down the rivers at up to 40 or more kilometres per hour are tearing at and ripping the sides of the stop banks like giant rippers on large earthmoving bulldozers etc. Hence weakening the stop banks then causing breaches. This will obviously be more obvious on corners where the current forces the full size trees with giant roots dragging like rippers against the banks
Interesting meeting coming up – fresh ideas. Hastings/Havelock Forest and Bird are hosting Tom Kay, national F&B Advocate, speaking about their programme ‘Making Room for Rivers’ next Thurs 13th April, 7.30pm. Venue: St Marks Hall, cnr Queen St East and Park Rd North. (It’s 912 Queen St but entrance on Park Rd North.)