Hawke’s Bay is juggling several crises: Martin Williams

Regional councillor Martin Williams says flood mitigation remains the council's top priority. Photo / NZME

Martin Williams is a Hawke’s Bay regional councillor, Ahuriri ward. For alternative views see Anna Lorck’s opinion piece, or Hinewai Ormsby’s.

OPINION

In an opinion piece published last week it was levelled that the regional council is in crisis.

As our chairwoman Hinewai Ormsby explained in her response, we are not in crisis, but we are amidst several. A climate crisis. A biodiversity crisis. A local government funding crisis. A crisis perhaps also in public confidence in our ability to listen, and to respond to severe weather events in the way our communities expect.

We need to own that context and accept responsibility as councillors where we are ultimately found to have fallen short by our communities, including at the ballot box in September 2025. In the meantime, one area we need to improve on is not just listening to the community voice, but better explaining why and how we are acting on what we have heard.

Take for example the concern stated in the opinion piece that “leadership is absent”, and “all ratepayers wanted was a plan that made sure flood protection was the priority”. This was said to have been made “easy” with $200 million of Government financial support being provided last year.

Again, as chairwpman Ormsby explained, flood mitigation has been and remains our No 1 priority. And ,as I cover below, we do indeed have a plan.

But what the opinion piece also overlooks is that the Government funding wasn’t just handed over, it was negotiated. In an inspired piece of leadership, Ormsby recruited Bill Bayfield as our interim CEO, who headed a negotiation team to match anything the Crown could put up, and deliver a deal on flood protection funding this country will probably never see the likes of again. One where Wairoa gets exclusive 100% funded flood protection works, denied the town after Cyclone Bola.

Even this unprecedented level of funding and the flood protection work programme it will deliver isn’t the whole story. There are, in fact, three phases to our overall and longer-term flood resilience plan in response to Cyclone Gabrielle.

The first and immediate phase was to rapidly reinstate nearly 6km of breached stopbanks, and repair nearly 30km more, completed by winter last year and in record time.

Phase two is the $250m Government-supported flood protection works within the long-term plan for the Wairoa, Whirinaki, Pōrangahau, Waiohiki, Pākōwhai and Ohiti Road/ Omāhu catchment areas to be completed over the next three construction seasons, with a new delivery unit being stood up to complete these works, being the single biggest capital project the council has ever attempted. A range of supporting works including new pump stations and additional stopbank height in other areas is also being carried out as part of this programme.

There is then phase three.

This week the report of an independent panel appointed to review our flood protection schemes will be received, including whether they performed as well as they should have in Cyclone Gabrielle. Looking to the future, this report is likely to recommend a new approach to flood management and resilience involving a scale and breadth of both imagination and investment that is next level again, well beyond that of the $250m flood protection construction programme getting under way in October.

Implementation of this longer-term approach to future flood resilience is likely to take decades rather than years. As well as stopbanks, spillways and ponding areas, the independent review report is likely to cover emerging “nature-based” options for catchment management including wetland enhancement, afforestation, braided river gravel management, and “making room for rivers”, all with considerable benefits for aquifer recharge and, ultimately, water security, as well as better erosion control, indeed biodiversity outcomes. The report being released this week will provide a platform for us not only to listen to what people think about these options, but for our communities to shape the longer-term vision for flood resilience in Hawke’s Bay as a whole.

And this is where the point about the so-called $500m “war chest” comes in. Alongside our long-term plan focus on flood resilience , we have reset our financial strategy to grow rather than “cash in” our existing investments, to best place the organisation to be able to meet the inevitably immense funding challenge this longer-term flood resilience vision will present. That is the “rainy day” we must prepare for, and prepare for it we will.

In the meantime, we are committed to a searching and robust inquiry into our organisational scale, structure and effectiveness, to ensure delivery of our other core functions around land and catchment management, biodiversity protection and enhancement as well as biosecurity (pest control), is the optimum it can be for the ratepayer spend.

We will then need to act on that review. All councillors accept that rates cannot keep spiralling up and that the organisation can’t keep matching complex environmental challenges by simply getting bigger and more complex ourselves. Our reset financial strategy will also deliver lower rates with more and more of our core business funded by investment returns over time.

This, then, is our plan, and part of the wider story, which we need to be better at sharing with you, our communities.

Being in crisis is no part of it.