During the July 2023 event over 150mm of rain fell over three days and resulted in the establishment of a Civil Defence Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), a precautionary self-evacuation of the Tuahiwi area, numerous road closures and widespread surface flooding at its peak.

The Council received over 335 requests for service from affected residents during the July 2023 event. In 2022 a more severe event resulted in over 800 requests.

To address this amount of recovery work, which is going to take several months to work through, the Council established a Flood Team in August who are tasked with assessing requests and prioritising work where it’s most needed.

“We know residents are concerned about their issue but also want the cause of flooding addressed holistically,” says Kalley Simpson, 3 Waters Manager.

“After a flooding event we often need to investigate the issue, look at potential solutions, and organise improvement works or include these in budgets for future years. It can be a process that takes time.

“We’ll be touching base with each resident who has contacted us with an issue and providing updates as we go through. But with the dashboard we want to be transparent and show how we are progressing. Residents will be able to look this up and see what progress in being made and where.”

A monthly dashboard and tracking document is available at: https://www.waimakariri.govt.nz/council/major-projects/council-projects/flood-recovery

In September, Council approved the establishment of an Infrastructure Resilience Team which will not only input to the response and recovery works in future flood events. They will also focus on implementing risk and resilience improvement projects and improving the Council’s and community’s readiness and preparedness for future events.