Tūtira Camp access closed by overflowed lake

Good for punting on the canal, but not much good for access to the camping ground: The access between lakes Tutira and Waikopiro, beside State Highway 2 between Napier and Wairoa. Photo / Paul Taylor

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is closely monitoring both the quality and levels of Lake Tutira which has reached near capacity after months of above-average rainfall in Hawke’s Bay.

Access to the lake’s campground has been closed, with deluges possibly not yet over.

Asset manager Chris Dolley said: “The water level at Lake Tūtira (which is alongside State Highway 2 between Napier and Wairoa) has been consistently high with all the rain this year, and the level is even higher, following the cyclone last week.”

“This means the public can’t access the main campground at the moment,” he said on Tuesday. “The Tūtira Regional Park access road is prone to being covered in high lake levels, and should be back to normal within the week - depending on what happens with the next cyclone.”

With heavy rainfall warnings again in place further north for the already devastated areas of the East Coast, the sunny and fine conditions in place in Napier-Hastings on Tuesday could prove to be temporary relief from what the regional council has already said is the wettest six months in the collective history of its rainfall stations.

Showers and rain are on the MetService forecasting menu every day for more than a week, in Napier-Hastings, rural Hawke’s Bay, and Wairoa, where the annual Thursday-Saturday A and P Show – Northern Hawke’s Bay’s biggest annual event and twice devastated by rain in the last 15 years – is again under a cloud.

Rainfall from January 1-16 at Hawke’s Bay Airport, north of Napier, at 141mm, is already more than double the January average, and at Mahia, north-east of Wairoa, the 100.2mm is almost double the January average.

Meanwhile, temperatures in Hawke’s Bay today struggled to reach 24C, despite the fine conditions, and in Napier the hottest temperature of the summer remains 28.2C, well short of the 30C temperatures usually felt in the region several times each summer by mid-January.

Tūtira is the only lake monitored by the regional council for swimmability, as part of a recreational water quality programme that runs from November-March.

The council monitoring includes bacteria levels (E. coli) and the risk of algal blooms, and in high rainfall events high bacteria levels can make the lake unsuitable for swimming, the Council says.

The results from sampling completed on Monday will be available tomorrow on LAWA (Land, Air, Water Aotearoa), however, last week’s results indicate Lake Tūtira is suitable for swimming.

The council says those intending to enter the lake should be checking the advice of LAWA.

A buoy that allows monitoring the risk of algal blooms in the lake currently indicates the risk is low, the council says.