\u201cThe ones behind them are still standing there waiting for the next flood,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt keeps me awake at night … the fact that we have yet to address this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alder said he thought it was \u201cpremature\u201d to shift the residual risk rating in the council report from serious to moderate until the problem was addressed. <\/p>\n
The council report provided a quarterly update on the council\u2019s strategic and enterprise risk management activities.<\/p>\n
Alder said it was \u201cscary\u201d looking at the river area on Google Maps, and he wanted staff to provide drone footage or photos of the area, and for consents for the removal of the trees to be sped up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can have those two things, I might be able to sleep\u201d<\/p>\n
Deputy Mayor Aubrey Ria said in terms of the risk ratings, it could be helpful for graphs to show activities individually.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand why we would be at \u2018moderate\u2019 because roading and flooding resilience has improved and there\u2019s been a lot of infrastructure work done in those areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council community lifelines director Tim Barry said the council had put the resilience of the Te Arai water supply \u201cat the highest possible level\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, it was \u201can outlier\u201d across general infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The council was advancing consents for forestry companies to remove trees in sensitive areas, which the council knew would pose a risk to the water supply pipeline.<\/p>\n
It was looking to \u201csurgically move into that area in the new year\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the challenges here are typographical in nature \u2013 extremely steep slopes right by water bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were a number of bridges, and what the council learnt through Cyclone Gabrielle was that \u201cbridges and trees don\u2019t work very well together in events\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
The council had identified \u201chigh-risk trees\u201d, some of which were \u201cvery large masses of timber\u201d that sat above the council\u2019s assets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got very delicate and challenging consents to try to remove some of those physically, so we are trying to do that this year (2025-26).\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if the council did its \u201cbest\u201d to remove the trees in that time period, the risk would be ongoing because there were difficult areas to access, Barry said.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged it was the council\u2019s \u201cbiggest utility known risk\u201d. The chances of an event happening were high over a long timeframe. However, in any one year, the chances were not high, he said.<\/p>\n
The council had \u201can amount of spare pipe, sitting at Waingake, available to pull into action\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we learnt from Gabrielle is that in six weeks we had the pipeline patched together again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council did not have the money for a duplication pipe, so it worked on shortening the time to respond to an event by using the Waipaoa Water Treatment Plant, which took water out of the Waipaoa, to run the city \u201cin limp mode\u201d for that period of time.<\/p>\n
Council chief financial officer Pauline Foreman said the council had mitigations in place and was working towards reducing the overall risks.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Nedine Thatcher Swann said she was unsure whether the magnitude of the issue was significant enough to \u201cimpact on a whole system-wide approach to risk management appetite\u201d.<\/p>\n
The consents were for three private companies, she said.<\/p>\n
Councillors could be taken to have a look at the area and have a briefing if they were interested, Thatcher Swann said.<\/p>\n
The independent chairman of the meeting, Bruce Robertson, said asking staff to produce drone footage \u201cin a small way\u201d was asking them to divert resources.<\/p>\n
He asked Barry to update the committee on the situation at the next quarterly meeting, following the work the council planned to do in the new year.<\/p>\n
According to the council report, the Infrastructure Asset Management strategic risk is defined as \u201cfailure to provide sustainable, fit-for-purpose critical infrastructure services\u201d.<\/p>\n
The residual risk had been reassessed from serious to moderate following an October \u201cdeep dive\u201d and the most recent Residual Risk Assessment.<\/p>\n
This reflected steady improvement in the council\u2019s overall asset management environment \u201cwith clearer governance and accountability now established across the three key infrastructure workstreams – water, roading and flood resilience\u201d, the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe ones behind them are still standing there waiting for the next flood,\u201d he said. \u201cIt keeps me…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1443,21045,62037,34263,2199,38290,7557,24925,12506,5420,20558,661,111,43,139,2551,69,52589,7192,6739,312,6100,19862,8690,8229,109209,6699,10419,8218,376,35969],"class_list":["post-167837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-about","tag-above","tag-arai","tag-awake","tag-city","tag-councillor","tag-district","tag-flood","tag-gisborne","tag-hes","tag-kept","tag-major","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-night","tag-nz","tag-pose","tag-risk","tag-river","tag-says","tag-still","tag-supply","tag-te","tag-they","tag-threaten","tag-towns","tag-trees","tag-warns","tag-water","tag-worrying"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}