a day ago
The realities of living in Northland's most flood-prone town, Moerewa
Northland's seen it all so far this year - drought, record-breaking rainfall, a cyclone and even a tornado. Is this part of a new normal? Or just par for the course in a region that's always had more than its share of extremes? Today we look at the threat of flooding and what's being done to protect Northland's most flood-prone town.
There's no such thing as sleep for Roddy Hapati-Pihema when it rains.
The father of six is the Kawakawa-Moerewa representative on the local community board and chairs the residents' association in the settlement of Taumatamakuku, but he's also a kind of self-appointed flood monitor.
Anytime it rains heavily, he's out all night unblocking drains, clearing downed trees and warning people if their homes are in danger.
He also describes himself as a squeaky wheel, trying to get change for his community.
Hapati-Pihema says Factory Road in Moerewa is one of the
worst affected areas
because there's just one stormwater drain and it's quickly blocked by sawdust from the nearby mill.
That leaves the home of a nearby resident - a "beautiful, humble, elderly man" - surrounded by floodwaters, compounding his already serious health issues.
"It's a nightmare. For the last 20 years he's been dealing with this," he says.
"Me and my children come here whenever it rains every two hours and we clear the culvert to ensure that the floodwaters don't reach him. We've done that for the better part of three years now."
In Taumatamakuku, next to busy State Highway 1, Hapati-Pihema points out a row of properties that have flooded five or six times in the last year alone.
He says the culvert under the highway is too small to handle the volume of water flowing down the valley during heavy rain.
"They're really frustrated. The big problem is if something goes wrong, who's liable? And I don't have an answer for them."
Further upstream, at the opposite end of Moerewa, Ōtiria Marae is also regularly threatened by floodwaters.
The carved meeting house is of national significance, due to its connections to the legendary 28th Māori Battalion.
However, when the Ōtiria and Waiharakeke streams burst their banks, the whare is one of the first buildings in the path of the flood.
A house on Ōtiria Road is surrounded by floodwater during the 2020 deluge.
Photo:
Peter de Graaf
In the most recent flood in 2020, the whare was an island in the middle of a swiftly flowing river that stretched almost from one side of the valley to the other.
There were also floods in 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2018.
Hapati-Pihema says water didn't get into the whare in 2020 - it stopped rising just a few centimetres short of floor level - but it's been inside and wreaked damage before.
Historically, Kāeo has been the poster child for flooding in Northland.
The twin 2007 floods were so devastating they prompted then Prime Minister Helen Clark to contemplate moving the entire town to higher ground.
Since then, however, new stopbanks and other flood prevention projects have largely kept the town centre above water.
In recent decades it's been Moerewa, and the neighbouring settlement of Ōtiria, that have borne the brunt of Northland flooding.
Changing weather patterns could be part of the story, with increasing temperatures expected to cause more extreme rainfall in the valley's sprawling catchment.
But community champion Pamela-Anne Ngohe-Simon says human activity is also a major contributor.
She says the construction of a railway and a road many years ago blocked the natural flood path of streams on either side of the valley.
As a result, any time the Ōtiria and Waiharakeke streams overflow, their floodwaters head down the main road, through the marae grounds and straight into town.
The situation was worsened by a narrow bridge on Pokapu Road that forced floodwater out of the Waiharakeke Stream.
Community advocate Pamela-Anne Ngohe-Simon and landowner Josephine Kemp-Baker (Ngāti Kopaki) inspect a flood reduction scheme upstream from Moerewa.
Photo:
RNZ / Peter de Graaf
Ngohe-Simon says the results for people living downstream in Moerewa were devastating.
"It's heart breaking to watch. You look outside and it looks like they've built their houses in a lake, it's that bad.
"We've had water enter our home as a child, so I know how soul-destroying that is for people."
However, that nightmare could now be over.
In 2020
substantial grants
from the Provincial Growth Fund and the Covid Response and Recovery Fund were earmarked for tackling the town's flooding woes.
Ngohe-Simon says what made this attempt to fix the problem different was that Northland Regional Council experts sought out local knowledge, and spoke to residents who remembered how floods behaved before the road and railway were built.
Computer modelling showed the locals were right.
Community advocate Pamela-Anne Ngohe-Simon, left, and landowner Josephine Kemp-Baker at the new Pokapu Bridge over the Waiharakeke River.
Photo:
RNZ / Peter de Graaf
Late last year the regional council completed the $7 million, 900-metre-long spillway upstream from Moerewa.
The spillway aims to restore historical flowpaths by allowing water spilling from the Ōtiria Stream to cross the valley, pass through a massive box culvert under Ngapipito Road, and join the Waiharakeke Stream, which has a much greater capacity.
A new bridge on Pokapu Road, three times longer than the old one, was also part of the project.
The regional council's experts say the spillway won't stop flooding completely, but areas afflicted by knee-deep flooding should only be ankle-deep in future.
Ngohe-Simon says the spillway fills only in the most extreme rainfall and has yet to be put to the test.
"But we're pretty confident flooding's going to be a thing of the past. To know that this piece of infrastructure has been put in, really, really gives me peace of mind that our whānau are going to be okay."
Another thing that set Moerewa's flood mitigation project apart was that it was built on multiple-owned Māori land, with the owners' blessing.
In the past land was often taken under the Public Works Act.
Ngāti Kopaki hapū chairwoman Josephine Kemp-Baker says the owners of the three blocks of land won't benefit from the scheme, because their properties don't flood.
However, they agreed to lease their land for the bridge and spillway, to protect people further downstream.
"I feel that it is our duty as hapū members to wrap our korowai around our whole community, and all of us work together for the wellbeing of all our whānau here… We were fine because where we are situated the floods didn't affect us, but we knew our community had been flooding for the last 50 years, and they'd had enough."
Ngohe-Simon says Moerewa's problems are compounded by inadequate drainage.
When floodwater enters the town it has nowhere to go, so it lingers - tainted with sewage from septic tanks - for days or even weeks on end.
That's now also being addressed by a separate Far North District Council project to upgrade the town's stormwater system.
Skip Kidwell waits for the water to recede after the 2020 flood.
Photo:
Peter de Graaf
Skip Kidwell, who owns the lowest house on the lowest street in Moerewa, says his property is regularly submerged in contaminated water and floating garbage.
Past floods have ruined his belongings and terrified his mokopuna.
"The amount of rubbish that came down, the amount of sewage… I had mokos in here, they were freaked out by the water, the wind, the rain," he said.
Kidwell is delighted to see a massive stormwater drain being built right through his property, which is now just days from completion.
Skip Kidwell outside his home - the lowest house in the lowest street in Moerewa - where a major drainage upgrade should finally put a stop to flooding.
Photo:
RNZ / Peter de Graaf
He's thinking about reinstating the vegetable garden he had before the floods got bad, and looking forward to letting the mokos run free in a backyard that's dry and free of flood-borne trash.
Between the flood scheme up the valley and improved drainage in town, there's now hope that Kidwell's home - and the homes of hundreds of other Moerewa residents like him - will never go underwater again.
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