Aftermath of storm is river full of debris

Heavy rain in northern Hawke's Bay last weekend caused a 300m-long log jam on Kopuawhara River.

Diggers are continuing work to clear Northern Hawke's Bay's Kopuawhara River after a storm last weekend caused a 300m log jam.

The Kopuawhara catchment, on the northern side of the Mahia Peninsula, was hit by up to 70mm of rain over two hours last Saturday night as part of a storm that dumped a total of about 170mm of rain in the area.

Debris and forestry "slash" built up to form a 300m-long unpassable log jam on the river near Kaiwautau Rd after a large tree toppled into the waterway, blocking the path to the sea.

Photographs of the aftermath of the storm were shown at Hawke's Bay Regional Council's monthly meeting this week.

The council's asset management group manager, Mike Adye, said four diggers had been used to clear the jam this week and two would continue working through the weekend.

A local forestry company was helping with the clean-up and it was unclear how much longer the work would take.

Council staff told councillors at this week's meeting much of the wood in the log jam was "slash" from harvesting which had occurred in the catchment sometime over the past year or so.

Because of that, council regulatory staff were reviewing aerial photos of the damage to determine wether any action should be taken against the local forestry company responsible for the land from where the slash had originated.

"To be fair to the forestry company, they may have inherited some of these issues from the New Zealand Forest Service [who previously owned the land], I don't know. We need to sit down with the forestry company and determine what options there are," Mr Adye said.

"A debris dam made from a few willows planted strategically in some of these gullies may assist [preventing future jams] - that is the sort of conversation we need to have."

He said while it was not uncommon for a large tree to fall into a river during a storm, "everything in this instance has combined to demonstrate the impact of slash coming down the river. Generally we only find it on the beaches, we don't see this sort of thing."

Hawke's Bay Regional Council chairman Fenton Wilson agreed the events leading up to the log jam were not uncommon and were an example of how "nature wins in the end".

"I think there is a great opening for that discussion with [the forest owners] and I would hope we make the most of this," he said.

Kopuawhara was the site of one of Hawke's Bay's worst tragedies back in 1938.

A flash flood hit a camp housing workers constructing the Napier-Gisborne rail line. Twenty men and one woman at the riverside camp were killed.