MEDIA RELEASE

Monday 2 May

Peace of mind not far away

Farmers in the Tokomaru area can take comfort now the critical first stage of work to rebuild and repair stopbanks along Linton Main drain has been completed.

Horizons Regional Council has spent about $2.1million rebuilding almost 4 km of stopbank on both banks of the drain, upstream of the Tokomaru River.

Continued improvements will be completed gradually over the next seven years.

In January 2008 a section of the stopbank failed immediately upstream of Ashlea Road, with about 350 hectares of dairying and horticultural land inundated with flood water. Crops and pasture were seriously damaged.

Horizons Regional Council operations manager Allan Cook said the present stopbanks were built in the 1920s, at a time when construction standards were not very high.

In excavating and rebuilding the stopbanks, a lot of buried timber and peat material had to be removed and clay material trucked in to form a compact and sound flood barrier, Mr Cook says.

Money to rebuild the stopbanks on sections of both the Linton Main Drain and the Tokomaru River is part of the Lower Manawatu Scheme, a $40 million, 12-year, rural-flood-protection upgrade project, which began in July 2006.

“Once the whole upgrade is completed in 2017-18, all rural land next to the Manawatu River and major tributaries downstream of Ashhurst and within the Lower Manawatu Scheme area will be protected from floods that have a 1 per cent probability of occurring in any year.

ENDS

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