Saturday, March 30, 2024

Weather leaves trail of damage

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Farmers on the North Island’s rain-hammered east coast want a couple of weeks with sun and some wind.
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“And I say just a little bit of wind. We don’t need to be blown away now,” Gisborne Federated Farmers immediate past president Charlie Reynolds said.

As farmland, roads and houses lay under water, stock stood stranded and the region declared a medium scale adverse event.

The biggest issue for farmers is getting about their farms.

Gisborne’s storm flooding over two successive weeks was classed a medium scale adverse event by Agriculture and Rural Communities Minister Damien O’Connor on Tuesday. 

“Well, really the biggest impact at the moment is the wet,” Reynolds said.

“We can’t do anything. We can’t get machinery anywhere. I spent three hours slipping all over the place with the tractor trying to clear just a small slip so I can get along a track.”

Keeping stock in was a priority for many and with gates gone paddocks are all running as one.

“And you can’t even get a fence post in as the hole just fills up with water.”

Reynolds said livestock farmers are quite stretched when it comes to feed.

“Winter feed has disappeared, feed budget plans have gone out the window and even supplementary feeding is not an option when you can’t get machinery on the land.

“Feeding stock is going to be quite a trick.”

Reynolds welcomed the adverse event status that allows the Rural Support Trust to co-ordinate responses and the tax relief is not to be scoffed at. 

“There’s nothing worse than having your farm disappear under water and IRD sends you an enormous tax bill.”

O’Connor acknowledged the area’s infrastructure, farmland and plantation forestry was significantly damaged with silt and forestry debris washing up over farmland and damaging bridges.

“The bigger picture is emerging that it’s not just about cleaning up the immediate damage and stock losses. 

“It’s about support to our communities and how to feed stock over winter when the pasture and winter crops are now under silt and water,” O’Connor said.

In Manawatu and Rangitikei there wasn’t that much rain falling but that’s what caught some farmers out, Federated Farmers provincial president Richard Morrison said.

“It’s bloody wet,” Morrison said.

It was the incredible amount of rain in the headwaters and high country that had river levels right up there causing flooding lower down.

“That caught some off guard as they were not expecting flooding when there was nothing dropping on top of them.”

Morrison said surface flooding had caused significant damage to river flat country but it was more a localised event.

The Moutoa floodgates on the Manawatu River were opened to relieve the river flow.

“While it’s an impressive wall of water when it’s let go, it’s also an indication of how significant the river flows are.

“There will be some farmers with long-term damage and there will be some with livestock issues while farmland under water dries off.

But while the Manawatu and Rangitikei Rivers were at their highest since the 2004 floods, this time flooding was not massively widespread like the floods of 2004, Morrison said.  

Similarly, in Hawke’s Bay it was not so much the amount of rain that fell but the fact a good summer and autumn meant water tables were quite high so the previous welcome weather has a sting in the tail when the rain is added.

In Wairarapa at the peak of the rain deluge flood warnings were issued by the regional council on Tuesday evening.

Carterton District cropping farmer Karen Williams said a lot of her farmland was under water.

“But fortunately we are mostly spring sowing so it’s mainly pasture that will hopefully drain off or soak in once the rain stops.”

Williams said most of the region’s surface flooding was river influenced because of the deluge on the plains.

“The rivers are flowing to the brim and once they go down we expect the flooding will subside without leaving too much damage.”

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