Council approves urgent Port Hills fire recovery work

Assessment work will begin on Monday into ways to control runoff into waterways from areas of the Port Hills affected by last month’s fire.

The fire burnt an area of 1645 hectares and initial analysis showed that the lack of vegetation meant there was a heightened risk of ash and soil entering waterways if there was significant rain.

Councillors have agreed that work should start immediately to resolve the most pressing issues, to be funded from existing budgets.

“What we’ve been hearing from the local rūnunga, stakeholders and wider community as we develop our recovery plan is about the need to protect our waterways. As a Council, one of our priorities is to protect and enhance our waterways and the decision to approve this work allows us to work with landowners to implement short-term solutions,” Mayor Lianne Dalziel says.

Staff would begin looking at things that could be done immediately to reduce the risk. Among options were creating silt traps by felling damaged trees, using straw bales as barriers to stop silt finding its way to waterways, as well as reseeding and initial replanting of hillsides.

Further assessment and analysis on longer term solutions would also be done.

Christchurch Recovery Manager Murray Sinclair says there will be a focus on reducing soil runoff, while also restricting ash and sediment from making its way into Lyttelton Harbour and local waterways.

“We’ve identified five main catchment areas and we need to develop plans for each catchment that will limit runoff.”

Future work was likely to include additional plantings as well as creating water storage ponds, he said. There would be investigation into replanting in ways that create natural fire breaks.

Mr Sinclair said a recovery plan with medium and long-term options would be presented to the Council by the middle of May 2017 so projects could be included in the Annual Plan.

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