Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown is backing a call for central government to support regional councils with long-term commitment and co-investment in flood protection.

Te Uru Kahika – Regional and Unitary Councils Aotearoa’s Chief Executive Officers Group is urging central government to prioritise co-investment in flood protection across New Zealand and says one-off, competitive, and after-the-fact recovery funding from central government is not a sustainable solution.

The group has just released a report in what is its second call for “national leadership and urgent action to meet the flood hazard risks arising from climate change”. An earlier report in 2019 said regional and unitary council investment in flood protection was falling well short of what was needed.

Mayor Brown said climate change was a national issue and ratepayers could not be expected to shoulder all the bill for critical flood protection work.

“As the May 2021 floods in this district proved, cleaning up and making repairs after a flood take a toll on finances, and physical and mental wellbeing.

“We’ve all seen the devastation on the West Coast since then, and in Tairāwhiti only a few weeks ago. With extreme weather events escalating, now is the time for central government to step up and I support this call for them to commit and co-invest in flood protection work.”

Michael McCartney, convenor of the Regional Council Chief Executive Officers Group, says it had been nearly three years since the original report highlighted alarming under-investment and since then 10 more significant floods had occurred.

“And that is not mentioning the substantial number of close calls where flood protection infrastructure has been pushed to within mere millimetres of its capacity. Any flood is a significant flood to the people that it affects,” he said.

“Despite all of this, the closest that regional councils have got to committed investment from central government – aside from after-the-fact recovery funding when flooding has already caused devastation – has been a three-year Covid-19 recovery fund for some shovel-ready projects that were already planned or under way.

“These are important initiatives, but they have been reactive and ad-hoc investment opportunities rather than a sustained co-investment commitment that addresses the critical flood protection needs of today and the immediate future.”

Chair of Local Government New Zealand’s (LGNZ) Regional Sector Group and Bay of Plenty Regional Council Chair Doug Leeder said climate change was a nationally significant issue, but the sector was not being supported by an adequate national response.

“Not only is significant co-investment funding needed now, but this must also be a clearly allocated line item in budgets to come, beginning with Budget 2023.”