There are no plans to manage the retreat of Kumeu due to flooding by relocating it.

However, the Kumeu River does need to be proactively maintained rather than be reactively maintained.

Better river maintenance was the message given ‘loud and clear’ by locals at an Auckland Council public meeting on February 17.

At the meeting a report was presented outlining the history of flooding in Kumeū-Huapai stretching back to 1926, where the Kumeū Post Office flooded to a depth of 1.2m. Since then there have been five notable floods, more recently in August 2021 and two in 2023. The Council said a second shopping centre is planned for to cope with future growth, although this was decades away.

Auckland Council concluded an upstream dam, or a drainage tunnel bored from the river across to the Waitemata Harbour, both costing hundreds of millions of dollars were not feasible to stop future flooding.

Locals suggested Council was missing a vital and cost effective solution by not keeping the river clear of dead trees, weed and other blockages. They said that before the Super City the legacy Rodney District Council would regularly carry out work along the Kumeu River removing materials that could potentially cause blockages and increase the risk of flooding. Since the establishment of the Supercity this proactive work has stopped and been replaced by a policy of reactive maintenance work which is they said is often too little too late.

According to the industrial landowners with businesses along the river edge, as well as the affected residential land owners, the lack of river maintenance is resulting in unwanted build-ups of debris restricting water flows during high rainfall events. These restricted areas are acting like ‘giant plugs’ backing up the water and eventually spilling over stock banks flooding the low lying land.

The strong feeling from the meeting was that if the river was better maintained, and obstacles were removed in advance of storms, this would improve protection of the township from flooding.

Hearing this, I promised those attending I would ‘go in to bat for them’ with Auckland Council to get the proactive maintenance program reinstated.

Furthermore, local contractors at the meeting spoke up asking if the new maintenance work could be tendered locally, rather than automatically given to a Council preferred supplier, giving the town greater transparency over the work being done through channels like Facebook, as well as allowing them to use local knowledge to better pinpoint the ‘real work’ that is needed.

The positive outcome has been that Council has listened, and agreed to all of the above. This is a great win for the flood prone property owners along the Kumeu River.

Auckland Council has positively stated it will tender out a new proactive maintenance contract this year exclusively to local contractors. This is a double win. Not only will the river be proactively maintained, but the work will be carried out by a local contracting firm.

It is impossible to stop flooding occurring during extreme weather events, especially if rainfall is over 100mm within a 7 hour period. By law Council is still obligated to keep the town’s flood plain maps updated to show what properties will flood in an extreme rain event. These maps show the worst case scenario of 200mm falling within a 7 hour period - and this amount of rainfall will be very rare. Unfortunately the insurance companies do not seem to be willing to acknowledge this rarity when assessing the insurability of properties.

So what does this all mean? Most importantly it means the township will be safer from flooding. Property owners, real estate agents, banks and insurance companies will be able to tangibly see an improvement in the river’s maintenance. With the improved protection from flooding local landowners and investors will hopefully have an improved feeling of optimism about Kumeu and Huapai.

© Scoop Media