Worries as Lake Taupo nears maximum capacity

Thursday, 24 November 2016

With the heavy rain falls hitting the Central Plateau recently Lake Taupo is nearing 100 per cent capacity and there's more wet weather forecast.

Erosion is already being seen on the shorelines in Waitahanui, Kuratau and other areas around Lake Taupo, and a common question has emerged among residents: are the control gates being opened?

The answer to that is yes, but maybe not as often as people would like.

Measuring levels show that Lake Taupo is currently sitting at 357.091 metres above sea level (MASL), with the maximum being 357.25 MASL - Lake Taupo is 99.96 per cent full.

On November 17, it reached 357.155 MASL.

**READ MORE:

* Erosion could see car park under water

* Action plan for Lake Taupo erosion

* Reef to tackle Taupo erosion**

Waitahanui was hit with some bad erosion last week after heavy rain falls, causing boulders to fall into the water, leaving a metre between the car park and the edge of the bank.

Now, it's happening elsewhere. 

'If we get an easterly storm event, which is quite common this time of year, we will get a lot of wave action that could just destroy the shorefront,' Kuratau resident and spokesperson for Friends of Lake Taupo, Tim Truebridge, said.

'And then it starts encroaching into the front yards of the properties on the lake front.'

Truebridge first noticed erosion happening in the area 10-15 years ago and he has been recording it ever since.

When the erosion first started happening, sand was imported onto an area of Kuratau Beach.

'Most of that looks like it has been washed away,' Truebridge said.

Now, water is washing away quite a bit of the shoreline, it has washed away a track between Kuratau Boat Ramp and Omori Boat Ramp, and Truebridge has said water is almost reaching service man holes, stormwater and sewage pipes.

'If the water reaches those areas it will be a major problem,' he said.

Truebridge said a reef that was put into the Waitahanui area a while ago and he thought something like that could work in Kuratau to minimise the erosion.

'It's worth a try in Kuratau, particularly at the beach front. It's a possible solution for the future.

'We want to see Mercury manage the lake and not use it as storage.'

Gavin Williamson, Hydro Generation Manger for Mercury, said the lake is driven by rainfall and from time to time it will go up faster than what they are able to let out.

'During high flow events, the lake will go up out of control,' he said.

'We let out three hundred cubic metres a second from the control gates and high rain level can see 1000 cubic metres coming into the lake.'

Williamson said the control gates were opening all the time to some degree but they had to consider what was happening in the Lower Waikato river because of the potential for flooding.

He said erosion was a natural event and a result of a number of factors, mainly wind events.

'The wind can generate waves up to one and half metres high,' he said.

'With that causing waves to crash against the lake front, erosion and accretion will happen.'

Williamson said they were working with all the right agencies to help battle erosion around the lake.

But erosion isn't the only problem.

Turangi residents have said it is the highest they've seen the lake get to in years, and flooding is becoming a major concern.

Taupo-Nui-a-Tia College's Waka Ama team have had a hard time training lately.

'The river, boy is that going fast at the moment,' Waka Ama coach, Stephanie Richard, said.

'That's giving us some resistance training. I said to the kids; that will make us ready for regionals.'

Richard added that the team went out training last Monday and noticed their buoy was gone.

'It was about 30 centimetres under water - well gone,' she said.

'So the girls dived under and untied the rop and let it get to the surface.'

Although Taupo has experienced some fine weather over the week, the forecast shows rain is expected to hit once again.