According to decisions made in May 2022, Horizons Regional Council will not be budgeting for works at the Waikawa river mouth. More detail below.
Horizons Regional Council’s catchment operations committee met [on 12 May 2022] to make a range of decisions about the proposed river management works programme for the 2022-23 financial year across the region.
For more detail and information about the … revised river management works programme please see Item 7 and 8 in the catchment operations meeting agenda. [Note: PDF, 20 MB]. Also available on this site. HRC Catchment Operations Agenda.pdf
No spending
On reading the PDF linked above, there are a couple of significant paragraphs about Waikawa Beach. [Note, Annual Plan (AP) and Long-term Plan (LTP)]:
9.1. Horizons has a range of reasons for committing to capital works programmes for river and drainage management schemes. The types of projects selected can be categorised in a number of ways. For the purposes of this item, the capital projects are categorised as follows:
… Requests for additional work both within and outside of schemes. Some of this additional work is able to be co-funded …. Other requests are outside the scope of Council-approved budgets e.g. Waikawa, Putorino landfill, Koitiata etc. [My emphasis]
Source: [Page 29] 9. CAPITAL PROJECT SELECTION
15.7. Waikawa Estuary – Horizons have been requested to undertake further work to protect a subdivision in the vicinity of the Waikawa Estuary. The issue sits outside of Horizons scheme area and Horizons have not provisioned budget to pursue work within the LTP. The erosion issue and potential work to remediate this relate to protection of a subdivision that was provided for by Horowhenua District Council, which originally held the consent. The consent was transferred to Horizons, when Horizons undertook some HDC-funded work there previously. Horizons sought to renew the consent, however the application lacked the information required for it to be processed. A report by Tonkin and Taylor was on potential works was presented to Council in April 2019 (Report No.19–37). It outlined a range of potential management options, which were narrowed to three that ranged from a capital cost of $150,000, $700–900,000 and $1 million plus. Each had ongoing annual maintenance costs and presumably staff time, consenting etc. costs over and above this. It is noted that contractor costs have increased since 2019 and that this does not likely include consenting costs. It is well understood that the Waikawa Estuary outlet has moved over time. The scale of movement was described in the Tonkin and Taylor report (March 2019), which stated “The natural mobility of the Waikawa Inlet has led to the implementation of various management operations and structures since the mid–1990s. Shoreline erosion of some 25m over the past 10 years at the northern end of the inlet bay has resulted in Horizons’ request for investigation into further management options to mitigate shoreline erosion”. In summary, the request for work at Waikawa Estuary has been investigated and there are options available via the Tonkin and Taylor report, which likely require updating. Roles and responsibilities for this work have been debated, in particular who should lead and pay for any proposed works. Consistent with the LTP, the proposed AP budget has not allocated budget to this project. [My emphasis]
Source: [Page 38, OTHER REQUESTED CAPITAL WORKS]
