Keeping people in Buller – and keeping them safe from flooding and coastal erosion – will be big tasks for the next mayor.
Westport is the biggest town in the Buller district, filled with people who work in tourism and mining. But the northern West Coast region, which includes Karamea in the north and Punakaiki and Reefton further south, is huge, filled with big rivers and roads sandwiched between hills and coast. Whoever is mayor of Buller next will have a lot to deal with.
Current mayor Jamie Cleine is going for a third term, with sitting councillor Linda Webb his main opposition. (Chris Russell, a local coal industry figure, is also standing, as is a candidate from the Money Free Party, Richard Omaston, who has put his hat in the ring at Buller and four other councils.)
Webb already has her council seat back, even if she doesn’t become mayor: she was elected unopposed. But when it comes to electing a mayor, “the community deserves some choice,” Webb says. While a mayor has only one vote on council, just like a councillor, she thinks the role is still important. “As mayor, you can put papers forward and ensure quality information gets to councillors to make decisions,” she says. If elected, she would also be the region’s first female mayor.
Westport’s main street (Photo: Michael Andrew)
Buller District Council covers a huge area: it’s 150 kilometres between Karamea in the north and Punakaiki in the south. It can be hard to get people engaged, Webb says: major decisions like the Long-Term Plan garner only a handful of submissions, and it’s a big ask for people in far-flung rural communities to travel for events like council workshops. As mayor, she’d like to see more coordination with community. She was frustrated, for example, that council didn’t coordinate with another recent event in the rural area of Ikamatua: while turnout had been high for a meeting in the community hall, hardly anyone turned up to a council consultation the next day. “If the community don’t engage, we don’t get the full picture,” Webb says. “There needs to be informal consultation – if people think council doesn’t listen, they won’t bother filling out a formal consultation form.”
Both Cleine and Webb agree that the delicate relationship with central government needs tending. “Local government relies on strong relationships,” says Cleine. “With the government increasingly signalling a regional approach rather than individual councils, we really need to co-operate.” He thinks the co-ordination required to put a new water authority in place will strengthen the four West Coast councils to present a united front to the central government.
A sign marking the road to Stockton Mine, a major employer (Image: Shanti Mathias)
Webb says the policy settings need to be right for the new water authority. “Affordability is a big challenge for our district,” she says. “With a new water entity, that part of the equation will be removed from council rating and rates will go down. But there’ll be another entity collecting water rates and those costs are going to skyrocket.” If central government imposed more rules to reduce rates rises, that would make it harder for the council to provide other services. “If central government goes back to basics and caps things like wellbeing, who funds the libraries? Will we have to cap community grants, which make such a huge difference?” Webb asks.
“We need a district where people want to come here, to work and invest,” Cleine says. Recreational facilities are part of that; despite the government directive, the council isn’t planning to majorly change where investment goes. Cleine’s focus on migration has an obvious cause: Buller was the only territorial authority to see a population decrease between the 2013 and 2023 censuses.
That said, Clein does note the role of the mining industry, which delivers royalties to the council. “They underpin so much – the health sector, sports, and the rest of it, it’s not just to justify their social licence,” he says. Cleine is on the Buller Resilience Trust, which is funded by Bathhurst, the operator of the nearby Stockton Coalmine. The trust gives out community grants for projects through the district.
The army visiting flooded homes in the Buller region after floods in 2021 (Photo: Supplied, NZDF)
The population is older, with 26.6% of residents over 65, compared to 16.6% in Aotearoa as a whole. One thing the town needs is better care for older people – another retirement village, perhaps, says Carol, a local working at the iSite. “There’s a real need for older people to have somewhere safe and nice to live,” she says. “There are lots of pensioners in this area, times are really tough,” says Webb. That’s one reason she wants to prioritise affordability.
Climate change is a big issue for Buller. Westport, where 45% of the district’s population lives, had major floods in 2021 and 2022, and many towns in the region, such as Granity, are being eroded by the sea. In inland towns like Reefton, where Webb lives, the council has worked on shoring up the banks of the river to prevent erosion. With some money from the central government, a “Resilient Westport” plan has been developed. It both accounts for defending Westport from the Buller River with stopbanks and walls, and for ensuring future housing growth in Westport is located, well, in an area that isn’t so vulnerable to flooding.
“It’s not the headline grabber, that we’re going to move Westport,” Cleine says. “It’s basically a plan to take equity from the floodplain and transfer it to higher ground.” If someone’s house is uninsurable after a flood, having already consented houses, roads and water infrastructure in a safer area will prevent the community totally fracturing. “We need buy-in, so many people have skin in the game and exposure to insurance risk,” Cleine says. It’s an intergenerational project, and might eventually require specific government legislation, and certainly more funding. “The [central] government should be part of that, and show how a small town can lead the adaptation conversation,” Cleine says.
The risk certainly feels ever present to Westport homeowners. Deb has seen a property she owns get eroded by the sea, and require hugely expensive, intense clean-up after floods. Given the stress, rates rises sting. “We’ve got to have facilities,” she says. “But what are they doing in that council building, are they just spending money on consultants? Why are my rates $4,500 for a tiny property?”