21 May 2018

Big road and water spend for Waimate

7:33 pm on 21 May 2018

The small south Canterbury town of Waimate is facing a big spend on desperately needed infrastructure.

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Photo: RNZ / Logan Church

Home to about 7000 ratepayers, the district has about 1400 kilometres of roads, much of which need urgent repairs.

Eighty percent of its water supplies also need upgrading.

To cover the cost, the council is proposing an average seven percent rates rise.

Waimate mayor, Craig Rowley, said some roads were built before the 1950s, and could not cope with the increase in traffic.

"What's happened is that agricultural machinery has run off the side of the roads and they break all the side of the road away," he said.

Mr Rowley said the area's drinking water network was also aged, with some pipes more than 100 years old.

Waimate district mayor Craig Rowley

Waimate district mayor Craig Rowley Photo: RNZ / Logan Church

The council said six of the Waimate District's water supplies are are not considered secure under drinking water standards.

"It brings with it a lot of challenges particularly around our rural drinking water schemes, one of them has about 32 users on it and they are looking at a $1 million water upgrade... it's difficult asking those users to pay for the sort of upgrade," Mr Rowley said.

The Waimate District Council's, chief executive, Stuart Duncan, said the cost of all this work would run into the millions.

The council wanted to bump its roading spend by $2.5 million over the next three years, with $1.4m of that coming from rates.

Drinking water supplies alone would take $7.4m over the next few years.

Stuart Duncan said that the cost had to be met by a very small population.

"The Challenge for Waimate is that we have a very large area," he said.

"We have 700 kilometres of sealed road and 700 kilometres of unsealed road and approximately 7000 people...so you have a huge roading network but only a few people to pay."

Joy McIvor lived in rural Waimate, and operated a small holiday park.

She said this work needed to happen as soon as possible, whatever the cost.

"That work is needed because our rural roads in particular need an upgrade, they have been left for too long," she said.

The total infrastructure spend will be finalised in June as part of the council's Long Term Plan.