Photo: Hawke's Bay Regional Council
The Hawke's Bay Regional Council says a $10 million boost to help clean up the enormous amount of silt from Cyclone Gabrielle is still nowhere near enough.
The government initially gave the region $137.2 million to clear silt, debris, and woody waste - and added an extra $12m for the council's silt recovery taskforce last week.
But that was only to ensure work could continue until the end of September. The latest $10m top-up would cover about another month's work.
Regional council chair Hinewai Ormsby said it was a relief, but would still leave a huge amount of land covered in silt.
Scooping out silt in the rain in Pakowhai, near Napier, in February. Photo: RNZ / Phil Pennington
"We estimate this latest money will help us complete 50 jobs and move around 200,000 cubic metres of sediment and debris during October," said Ormsby.
But that left 223 jobs waiting to be completed, or about 1.2 million cubic metres of silt. That was a concern for growers especially, who needed to plant and spray ahead of the growing season.
"While we're thankful to the government for the additional funding to continue on for the next month, we're disappointed we won't be able to complete all of these jobs and that there will be people in the community left with sediment and debris on their property."
Silt recovery taskforce lead Darren de Klerk said the team would focus on high priority jobs for October, because they could not get to everyone.
"We will be focusing on jobs that were abandoned when we implemented the funding restriction and then moving onto other high priority jobs.
"We ask those affected and requiring a collection - even if they aren't ready yet - to log a collection request with the regional council by Friday 6 October so we can prioritise which jobs get completed, and so we can continue to lobby government for more funding with a full picture of the job ahead of us."
De Klerk said once the money ran out, the taskforce would work with landowners with silt left on their property to find a solution.
