Westport residents berate council over 'stupid' plan to relocate town

Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon

Buller District mayor admits some residents "feel forgotten" by a plan to eventually relocate the flood-prone town of Westport, but it is needed to provide a "glimmer of hope" in the face of repetitive and increasingly damaging flooding.

Buller councillors voted to continue to the third stage of a draft master plan, at a meeting on Wednesday.

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Can an entire town be moved?

The Westport master planning process began in 2023 and proposes to move Westport to government-owned Pāmu-Landcorp farmland southwest of its current location.

Stage Three of the plan is the "action and enablement" of the project.

The majority of councillors voted in favour of all options, including endorsing "in principle" the draft plan's content and strategies, seeking external seed funding, progressing discussions with Landcorp and investigating the establishment of the legal entity to drive the work.

But at a public forum before the meeting, many of those who spoke were strongly against the plan.

One speaker, Gary Howard, said his "main concern" was that land values in Westport were plummeting.

"The media has come across the message that Westport is moving. It is very detrimental to the property holders currently in Westport, exceedingly detrimental."

Another speaker, Paul Reynolds, accused the council of "cherry-picking" the 126 people it consulted in February and March for its master planning feedback survey, in which 77 percent agreed with the approach to planning Westport's future.

Reynolds said he and several others canvassed more than 500 people over two days outside a local supermarket for their views on the master plan.

"We asked two questions: 'Do you want Westport moved?' Nineteen were for, and 514 were against. The second question: do you want BDC [Buller District Council] spending on moving Westport? Twelve were for, 524 [sic]...were against any future spending on this stupid plan."

The figures were "starkly different" to those arrived at by council, he added, proving there was "a disconnect".

In response, the mayor suggested Reynolds had been "brow beating" people doing their weekly shop.

Another speaker, Margaret Grant, said reports the town would be moved "can cause great anxiety... people in other parts of the country are ringing their relatives, really concerned at what they read and hear. I appreciate you're trying to plan for the next 50 to 100 years' time but not at the expense of the next 20 years' residents."

In closing the council meeting, Buller mayor Jamie Cleine said he had "never said we are picking up Westport and moving it " but he "acknowledged that people have felt forgotten" in the discussion.

"What I always come back to, and it's still the case today is that, at the moment, if we had another event tomorrow, I'm the one who walks through the door of the person you spoke of who has had his or her house flooded for the third or fourth time in suburban Westport and at the moment I have nothing to tell them except that you can invest your insurance money wherever you like and I wish you well.

"A master plan, for people in my position in maybe 10, maybe 15 years' time, there's a chance that they can say to that person... we've done some master planning up here and we've actually negotiated an opportunity where we may be able to consider some form of land swap, some form of pathway that you can protect your equity in your existing property and carry on your life in a much less hazardous area."

The council didn't have the necessary answers now, he said. "But is this master planning a pathway to create those answers, and a glimmer of hope to try and create those answers? Then, absolutely, yes."

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