Coastal request to be raised with WRC

It’ll be a delicate dance, but “dance we must” says Thames-Coromandel District Council as it prepares to broach a touchy subject with its regional counterparts: can elements of Thames’ coastal protection be incorporated into the Waihou Valley flood protection scheme?
The scheme, alongside the neighbouring Piako River scheme, includes 357km of stopbanks and floodwalls, 139 floodgates, and 52 pump stations which help protect Te Aroha, Paeroa, Thames, Ngātea, Turua and Kopu from significant weather events.
But following the initiation of the Thames Protection and Resilience project, the project team considered whether the town’s coastal protection efforts could be incorporated within the Waihou scheme, a step that could help clear up historically muddied waters.
So, at council’s May 13 meeting, staff asked how best to broach the subject with Waikato Regional Council: with a softer approach, or with an outright question.
“You know, this is a big subject,” Cr John Grant said. “It’s the iceberg that sits with all the mass underneath the water.
“And in this particular case here, I feel very uncomfortable as a councillor without clarity, without 100 per cent clarity, about who ultimately takes responsibility. And the longer we play, and the longer we dance, the more uncertainty we create for the area.
“We’ve seen cases of this in the recent [Cyclone] Gabrielle situation, where there was crossover between various entities, and it wasn’t clear exactly who was responsible for those,” he said.
“So my view is absolutely we should do it with diplomacy, but we should absolutely do it with a mind of getting an outcome and a clear view… I know that I’m sort of saying that we need to have a perfect scenario in a situation where you’re unlikely to ever get one, but I think it does deserve clarity around exactly where the costs lie.”
Elected members voted to make a formal request to Waikato Regional Council to commence discussion on including elements of Thames’ coastal protection into the Waihou Valley flood protection scheme.
They also asked Mayor Len Salt to write to the regional council chair to reinforce TCDC’s commitment to the provision of information and support ongoing collaboration.