In its draft annual plan, ECan is proposing a reclassification for the Ashburton district river rating that has been in place for 27 years, to ensure the amount residents pay better reflects the benefits they receive.
The proposal included reducing the number of rating classes from 13 to 6, and including some properties that received protection from flooding but didn’t currently contribute.
Ecan councillor and co-chair of the council’s catchment committee, Ian Mackenzie, said the proposed changes ensured “those who are benefitting are paying their fair share”.
Mackenzie said about 82 per cent of the assets covered by current flood protection were urban but 73 per cent of the cost came from rural ratepayers.
Last year’s floods were a wake-up call to the significance of flood protection infrastructure.
“What the floods highlighted to me was how tenuous and fragile our flood protection investment is, especially when we consider that the forecasts for climate change predict that events like the May floods will happen with far greater frequency."
In Canterbury he said around $15 million was spent annually managing our rivers and maintaining $650m of flood protection infrastructure, that in turn protected $110b worth of public and private assets.
“In many cases, especially on our smaller rivers, it makes sense to consider putting in place comprehensive rating districts over the whole river system so that we can manage these rivers not only for flood risk but for all the other values that our communities expect.”
A significant change had been the development, both urban and rural, that had occurred since most of these flood protection schemes had been built.
“Some of this new development has been enabled because of this flood protection such as the Riverside industrial estate in Ashburton and the new subdivisions above Tinwald.
“The industrial estate is protected by the Ashburton stopbank, and Tinwald by the Valetta stopbank both of which are designed to withstand a 1 in 200-year event - just.”
With the expansion of urban development “we know that there will be an expectation from these property owners for better protection than farmers might expect for their land”.
“We also know that we will need more money to manage our rivers and the associated flood risks to meet these rising expectations, and we will need to review whether those who are benefiting are paying their fair share.”
As well as the proposed changes to Ashburton River rating, he said there was also a push for a return of annual flood protection funding from central government.
The government stopped flood protection funding back in 1989 which had previously paid most of the capital cost and up to 50 per cent of the maintenance costs.
“We are hoping sense will prevail and that the river reviews proposed and success with our appeal to government for on-going funding will be successful and allow us to raise the money we need to successfully adapt our river management strategy to face the challenges of the future,” Mackenzie said.
- By Jonathan Leask
