Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Kaikōura MP Stuart Smith and Tasman Mayor Tim King in Tasman on Saturday. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ
The government has agreed to fund a rain radar for the flood-battered Tasman district, but questions remain over how the multi-milllion dolllar recovery will be funded.
It was announced on Saturday that a rain radar for the top of the South Island would be funded by MetService at a cost of $5 million, with operating costs of about $800,000 a year.
That comes after years of campaigning, with the region considered a blank spot in the national radar coverage.
Tasman Mayor Tim King was pleasantly surprised to see the investment finally being made.
"It is a massive up-side for us to get that technology in this region. It will provide us earlier warning.
"It will help with our primary role, which is to save lives, and give people time to evacuate and move if they need to."
King said the radar alone wouldn't change things. Hydrology expertise was still needed to interpret the information it provided, and a consistent approach to the messages and warnings delivered during severe weather events was needed.
The district council's principal hydrologist, Martin Doyle, who had pushed for a rain radar for the region since 2010, said he was "particularly chuffed" with the news.
The need for better radar coverage was clear, after a flood in Golden Bay's Aorere River in 2010, and Doyle said, since then, the region had experienced a series of very large floods, with this year "probably topping the lot".
Doyle had more than four decades' experience working as a hydrologist in the region and said the past few weeks had been "some of the hardest times" he could recall.
A report to the Tasman District Council in June 2023 said the unpredictable nature of rain that year highlighted the poor coverage in Tasman of the Wellington weather radar, with "isolated convective rain cells sneaking in between our rain gauges".
Mud and silt spread across Mill Creek Orchard in Motueka. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ
It cited a flood in the Wai-iti River in May 2023 as being the largest since records began in that area in 1987, with no advance warning from the rain-gauge network. The two recent floods in the Wai-iti had surpassed that.
"In the last month, we've had the second-largest flood [since records began] in the Upper Tākaka River, the two largest floods in the Motueka River, the two largest floods in the Wai-iti as well and that's excluding all the smaller tributaries of the Motueka, like the Motupiko and Tadmor," Doyle said.
"In Motueka, we know the largest flood there in colonial times was in 1877 and this was equal to that flood."
He said there was no doubt that a rain radar would have made quite a difference to the council's preparedness, as heavy rain often fell between gauges across the district, with no way to detect it.
"We just simply don't have the ability right now to see where all those heavy cells of rain are. It's particularly important for a widespread event, but equally so for those short-duration, high-intensity events."
Doyle planned to hang up his raincoat in the next year and it was one of his goals to see a radar installed in the region, before his retirement.
"I'm certainly feeling particularly chuffed that this is going to happen for the region. Our community's had a pretty tough time just recently and they deserve to have something good come out of it."
No commitment to more recovery funding for Tasman
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon wouldn't say whether the government would provide more funding for flood relief on his first visit to the region on Saturday, three weeks after the first of two floods caused widespread damage to farms, orchards and homes across the Tasman District.
In the Motueka West Bank, Luxon heard from blueberry farmer Donald Heckler at Mill Creek Orchard, who said their entire 30-hectare crop had been affected in some way by the back-to-back flood events.
The family were hit by the flooding in late June and had cleaned up much of their property, when they were hit even harder in the second flood, two weeks later, with the orchard still covered in a layer of silt and mud.
Mill Creek Orchard owner Donald Heckler showing Prime Minister Christopher Luxon the damage to his blueberry farm after two floods in Tasman. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ
Heckler estimated they had lost 70 percent of production this coming season.
"Some of it's been completely wiped out and some of it has been affected in ways we don't even know yet.
Luxon also visited Stuart Allan and Nicola Wilkins' farm, and spoke to orchardists Steve and Charlton Malcolm about the damage their properties had suffered in recent weeks.
The government announced a $500,000 support package for the region earlier this week, which included $100,000 from the horticulture and pastoral sectors, for the storm battered Tasman District.
It followed a $100,000 contribution to the mayoral relief fund, after the first flood in June.
Luxon said the government's immediate focus was on the response and making a decision on the rain radar, to which it had allocated $5m, after hearing the requests from both mayors in Nelson and Tasman, and the community.
"It won't make the rain go away, but it just might help us direct our resources and our messaging and our communication and our preparedness and readiness, so we even get a better response next time round, as a function of having that data and that information."
He said cabinet had not decided yet whether it would give more funding to property owners or the Tasman District Council.
He said the country faced major challenges, when it came to climate adaption work, and there needed to be cross-party agreement on a framework, moving foward with that work being led by Climate Change Minister Simon Watts in Parliament.
Long-term planning was needed to address the prospect of managed retreat, including in the Motueka area.
Luxon said the country was undoubtedly experiencing more extreme weather events off the back of climate change and the focus needed to be on the things that coulld be controlled.
"We have a major challenge in this country, which is that - frankly - the government can't keep bailing out property owners, after each successive event, neither can local government.
"The balance of risk of how that sits between central government, local government and the landowner themselves is something that this country - and many countries, frankly, around the world - are all wrestling with."
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