Truckloads of silt being dumped at a silt deposit site in Hawke's Bay. Photo / Warren Buckland
Truckloads of silt being dumped at a silt deposit site in Hawke's Bay. Photo / Warren Buckland
There are still about 500,000 truckloads of silt to be collected and disposed of in Hawke’s Bay.
That’s 3.5 million cubic metres of the unwanted silt, which is currently blanketing orchards, vineyards, farms, residential properties, and public land in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.
To put that number of trucksin context, if they were back-to-back, they’d line the entire length of New Zealand - then back again.
The Hastings District Council released a locality plan last week and stated the silt clean-up was so enormous it would take years, not months, to complete.
If you lined trucks up with silt from Hawke's Bay back-to-back-to-back, they would stretch all the way up the country and back. Graphic / NZME
“This work is estimated to take three years at a projected cost of $266 million,” the locality plan stated.
“Sites for storage are continuing to be identified as are potential end uses for the silt.”
There are six sites dotted around the region where silt is currently being dumped and the Silt Recovery Taskforce is planning to increase that number to 10 sites “in the next fortnight”.
The Government has so far announced Hawke’s Bay will be given $133m for silt clean-up and disposal - which is half of the estimated cost needed.
Darren de Klerk, the lead of the Silt Recovery Taskforce, which is headed up by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and the Hastings District Council, said over 150 people were currently working on silt collection and disposal.
A car in a silt-covered paddock near Puketapu. Photo / NZME
“We are working hard to use as many local contractors as we can, with approximately 15 [contractors] engaged in the collection process and six in the site management process.”
He said a crew was typically made up of a digger and driver and two to three trucks being continuously loaded at any given site.
More than 500 truckloads of silt are currently being collected and dropped to disposal sites each day.
To date, over 200,000 cubic metres of silt has been disposed of out of the estimated 3.5 million to 4 million cubic metres which was washed down Hawke’s Bay’s rivers on February 13 and 14 from hills, devastating homes and properties.
The Hastings District Council locality plan released last week set out top priorities (and estimated costs) for the cyclone recovery in the district.
Some of those top priorities were road and bridge infrastructure repair ($800m), silt collection ($266m), a horticulture and farming support package ($800m), and wellbeing support ($85m).
The Hastings District Council noted in its plan that it was anticipating “much of the estimated $800 million cost [for roading infrastructure] will be able to be met by Government and insurance [but] the local share will still be significant”.
