“I can’t say there’s going to be Bailey bridges everywhere for 10 years but it may be that, if somebody’s got perfectly adequate access then they are at the back of the programme, because there’s other areas that haven’t got access,” said Regional Recovery Agency chief executive Ross McLeod.
“Waiohiki [Redclyffe] Bridge is a perfect example. That’s designed to be there for around five years.
“That’s a temporary solution and they’re not sure that they’re actually going to put the bridge back there as the permanent solution, but they’ve bought themselves a perfectly functional five-year solution.”
Work on stopbanks is expected to start this year, while the state highway network is in various stages of being repaired.
O’Keeffe and McLeod acknowledge some residents might wish Hawke’s Bay’s cyclone rebuild to be instantaneous and for the Government, councils and private industry to throw the kitchen sink at the various infrastructure projects.
But O’Keeffe cautions that a proper rebuild, rather than the sticking-plaster type, takes time.
“If we try and do everything all at once you create pressure in the system and … stresses on the labour market and the materials market, which could cause hyper-inflation during the period as well,” said O’Keeffe.
“So we need to be careful as a region that we don’t essentially diminish what we can produce because the cost of doing it is exacerbated by going too fast.”
Which is why McLeod is forecasting 10 years for roads and four for flood protection work.
Partly that’s because of the scale of work required and the personnel and expertise to do it, but also the funding.
McLeod says the new Government is saying and doing all the right things so far and “we’re getting no signals at all that there’s going to be parsimony on the recovery spend”.
It’s work that will cost billions of dollars and, while some of that money has already been committed, there’s no blank cheque and the funding comes in stages rather than all upfront.
“So it’s a balance of trying to deliver as resilient a solution as possible within the bounds of what we can afford and that’s the challenge,” O’Keeffe said.
Projects are being lined up in order of priority and will then start as, and when, the funding arrives.
The goal at the end of it is to give Hawke’s Bay a better chance of withstanding natural disasters.
“It’s the failure of the infrastructure that’s ultimately caused most of the damage within the region and that’s what will cause future harm if we don’t build back better,” said O’Keeffe.
In the meantime, the pair realise that, even a year on, the cyclone impact represents a daily struggle for some.
“We’re very conscious that we can talk about the good progress being made, but there are still people that don’t see or feel that progress yet,” McLeod said.
Hamish Bidwell joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2022 and works out of the Hastings newsroom.
