Environment Canterbury has spent $8.5m repairing and strengthening resilience across the Rangitata and Waitaki Rivers following significant rainfall in December 2019 which caused widespread flooding and damage to flood protection infrastructure in South Canterbury.
The flood was 35 times the usual flow in the Rangitata, breaking through five different sites including the south branch, which hadn’t had significant flow in 24 years.
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Initial repair work post flood was done to keep the community safe. Further works including stopbank reinforcement and stabilisation, native planting, large-scale pole planting, protection of the Peel Forest landfill, debris clearance at the Rangitata Huts and aerial weed control across more than 260 hectares of the Rangitata across both the Rangitata and Waitaki rivers enabled Environment Canterbury to significantly enhance the flood protection of both rivers.
More than 60 per cent of the cost of works were covered by climate resilience funding from central government, and the rest from Environment Canterbury, contributions from government and private infrastructure owners (NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi, KiwiRail, Transpower, Rangitata South Irrigation Ltd) and local district councils.
Not only did the co-investment enable the recovery work to be delivered much faster than with rates alone, but most of the contracts were also awarded to local businesses strongly impacted by COVID-19, providing a much-needed economic boost. This provided employment or contracts to over 24 local businesses, reduced flood risk to around 10,000 hectares of land, and placed nearly 20,000 tonnes of rock.
