By Kira Carrington, Local Democracy Reporter
Marlborough District Council environmental land scientist Matt Oliver said the cost of river works is 'unworkable' for both council and ratepayers. Photo: Marlborough Express
Landowners in north Marlborough are frustrated at the lack of action from Marlborough District Council on riverbank erosion threatening their properties, but the council says it can't intervene without footing a bill of more than a billion dollars.
Senior environmental land scientist Matt Oliver told council on Thursday that riverbank erosion in the Te Hoiere/Pelorus catchment was a serious threat to farmers' land, and could impact powerlines, roads including State Highway 6, and the Rai Valley landfill.
"The river is cutting in and taking trees away," Oliver said.
"[There's] some pretty significant damage happening to the environment up there and it places a reasonable level of threat to some infrastructure.
"The rivers in this catchment regularly create problems on farmland and results in them wanting to take action to protect their land."
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Erosion was taking metres of land, sometimes more during a major flood event, with gravel being strewn across the paddocks, he said.
"It's fair to say that there's a fairly high level of frustration about that."
Oliver said the erosion of the river bank would cause the rivers to meander and change course, a natural process that had been accelerated by human activity.
"We hardened the catchments... removed the native cover," Oliver said.
"We're taking away half of the forest and half of its capacity to absorb rainfall.
"That increases with... putting in roads and roofs, pasture. All of the rainfall now reaches the ground on pasture rather than being absorbed by trees.
"We have higher flood volumes, those floods move faster, they erode the banks.
"We get more meandering which creates more gravel from the banks, more gravel accentuates the bars which leads to meandering... we can go around and around."
Oliver said local landowners had been raising the alarm about erosion for some time, in the hope the council would conduct river protection works.
He said there was a "legacy of expectation" as council conducted several ad-hoc river interventions back in the 1980s.
"One of the most common comments we get is 'the council used to come and fix this'.
"And so those expectations exist that council is going to come and do this work."
Riverbank erosion in the Te Hoiere/Pelorus catchment. Farmers are losing metres of land at a time to the river. Photo: Supplied
But Oliver said the cost of council intervention would be outrageous.
"Discussions with our rivers team colleagues have indicated that the cost of instituting [an intervention today] would be outrageous," Oliver said
"Starting at a billion dollars and massive interest costs over a long period of time - it's simply unworkable.
"It's unlikely that council are going to ride in to the rescue of these landowners."
Landowners who want to conduct their own river protection works have to apply for a council resource consent, a point of great frustration for the landowners, Oliver said.
"We've heard through our catchment management meetings, [that] they struggle with the concept of consenting," he said. "And they find the cost and the time of obtaining them too high... too long.
"It doesn't change the fact that it is the law.
"The regional plan and the RMA set out that work in rivers requires consents.
"[A consent] will help provide certainty of what you're doing is a viable way of acting."
Oliver said they have created a guide for landowners to use the council's online portal to more easily apply for river works consents.
Another suggestion had been to set up a river management group, which would allow landowners to more easily interact with agencies like council.
Oliver said these groups were the norm in countries like Australia, the US, and the UK.
Councillor Barbara Faulls acknowledged that this was a contentious issue for farmers.
"That's something that we've got coming at us in the future... What is practical for us to do as a council which assists the landowners up there," Faulls said.
"The community river management group, I think [is] a really good practical way forward.
"But I also do think that we've got to have a conversation at Long-Term Plan time around the $20,000 allocation towards streams and rivers and creeks in the northern area of Marlborough because it's unfortunately... just not enough."
Councillor Gerald Hope said that while council was bound by the limitations of nature, he was optimistic.
"Nature takes no prisoners. Nature has no need for a resource consent when it has a massive rain that takes away the soil and everything else with it.
"But I'm optimistic. The modelling that they've done, the relationships they're building, we can get something out of it.
"The reality [is] if we're gonna do it, we can't do it alone.
"It's going to be beyond our budgets, [and] well beyond their budgets."
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
