Paradise under threat: Is Mother Nature limiting West Coast's tourism potential?

Friday, 13 December 2019

Torrential rain caused significant damage to SH6 over Mt Hercules in South Westland.

The West Coast has had its fair share of weather chaos in the past two years. Could successive storms prompt a re-think of the region's tourism dream? JOANNE CARROLL reports.

The wild West Coast weather is living up to its reputation.

Torrential rain caused numerous slips, road washouts and a bridge collapse on Sunday, left South Westland cut off from the rest of the country and 1000 tourists stranded in Franz Josef. It came days after heavy rain, slips and fallen trees closed the Haast Pass.

The flood subsides at the Mueller hotel in Franz Josef after the Waiho River broke its banks

It wasn't the first major storm to wreck major havoc, and it won't be the last.

A West Coast mayor says the unpredictability and frequency of storm events and the havoc they can cause to fragile infrastructure means the region cannot rely on tourism alone.

Waiho Bridge taken out by the flooded Waiho River.

In early 2018, Cyclone Fehi caused substantial damage in Buller, with several homes having to be permanently red-stickered in Westport. Westport Airport lost 300m of its runway seawall and several spots along the coast lost substantial chunks of their beachfront.

The total cost of the cyclone's damage was $45.9m. Less than a month later, Cyclone Gita caused $35.6m worth of damage. The March 2019 flooding ripped out the Waiho Bridge in Franz Josef for two weeks and burst open an old landfill at a cost of $9.5m.

Damage in Punakaiki after flooding struck the West Coast, caused by former cyclone Fehi making landfall and a king tide.

That was three years after a major flood wiped out the Scenic Circle's Mueller Hotel and forced the evacuation of 100 tourists from the nearby Top 10 Holiday Park.

**READ MORE:

A massive slip blocks a section of SH6 near Mt Hercules on the West Coast on Tuesday.

* Tourism hotspots 'face devastation' after weekend of storms, floods and slips

* Massive slip blocking West Coast road could take six weeks to fix

One of the big dropouts or road collapses at Mt Hercules/ Whataroa after storm event.

* Stranded travellers and residents hunkering down in flooded Rangitata as roads remain closed**

Drone footage shows full extent of the damage to the Waiho Bridge, near Franz Josef on the West Coast, in March 2019.

In response, the Government this week announced an extra $15m over the next three years to improve the resilience of West Coast roads – taking the total to $195m.

Grey mayor Tania Gibson said the weather made the West Coast vulnerable to road closures.

Stuff was the first media to fly into the West Coast town of Haast when it was cut off in the aftermath of tropical Cyclone Fehi.

A slip at Omoto in October stopped the TranzAlpine train from getting to Greymouth for about 10 weeks. This has had a huge impact on the district's economy.

She said the town had lost about 5500 train passengers a month who usually came into the Greymouth CBD. The slip forced the train to stop at Arthur's Pass and people were given the option of catching a bus to Greymouth. But many might have stayed in Arthur's or carried on to the glaciers instead of coming to Greymouth, Gibson said.

The slip also cut direct access from Kaiata and Dobson to Greymouth. A small business owner in Kaiata had told her they had lost $70,000 a month due to the road closure.

The council was talking to the Government about a potential financial assistance package for affected businesses.

'The level of commercial loss in the district is significant,' she said.

The Grey district had 200 bridges that needed maintenance or renewal, but council had limited funds due to the small population who were already struggling to pay their rates.

She wanted the Government to help the Coast by allowing projects like the Waitaha hydroscheme to go ahead. It would have brought 20 jobs and an estimated $50m boost to the economy. It was rejected by the Government due to the impact on the pristine environment of the Waitaha River.

He considered expert advice and submitters' views, and concluded the adverse effects of the activity could not be adequately or reasonably mitigated.

Gibson said she was frustrated that the Government had proposals which would prevent further mining on conservation land, and increasing environmental protections on private land identified as being in a 'significant natural area'. She feared the proposed freshwater action plan also threatened the region's primary industries survival.

'They tell us tourism is going to be the answer to our problems. It has a great place in our economy but tourism is seasonal and not in line with the mining pay scale.

'We cannot live off tourism alone. We have got to get new infrastructure. These weather events are happening too often and we are shut off.

'They tell us our future is tourism but here we are again with road closures and tourists not being able to get here,' she said.

Tourism is already the biggest source of employment for the West Coast, with one out of every five jobs linked to tourism. Since 2012, tourism sector jobs have risen from 2640 to 3322. The number of mining jobs fell from 1472 to 470.

But tourism industry jobs are typically poorly paid while mining is a big earner.

The GDP contribution per job in tourism is estimated at just $59,603, compared to $227,660 per filled mining job.

Even this month's opening of the country's first new Great Walk – the Paparoa Track from Blackball to Punakaiki – was marred by a major slip which took out a central section of the track, forcing DOC to refund weeks of bookings by trampers and cyclists.

LIVING IN PARADISE

Gibson said business owners on the West Coast were genuinely afraid for their livelihoods and because of the uncertainty business confidence was down.

'The current uncertainty makes investors very wary. Our economy is on a knife edge.

'We live in paradise and we just want to be able to stay and have opportunities for our children and families,' she said.

Westland mayor Bruce Smith earlier said a huge slip at Mt Hercules onto SH6 south of Harihari on Sunday would have a bigger economic impact than the washout of the Waiho Bridge earlier this year, which closed the highway for three weeks.

The road is expected to remain closed until Christmas, potentially longer.

Tourism West Coast chief executive Jim Little said many visitors had cancelled their trips to the West Coast on hearing the road was closed.

'The downside of visitor cancellations is major. We calculated that during the three weeks the Waiho bridge was out in March we missed $50.4 million in lost earnings.

'This is going to be as bad. However, most of the Coast is open for business from Hari Hari north to Karamea and from Fox south,' he said.

NZTA contractors worked around the clock to clear the road south of Whataroa by Wednesday after the huge storm caused multiple slips on Sunday.

It warned that the journey would be much slower for travellers for some time to come, with many work sites, one lane sections, and closures overnight on the Fox Hills.

It has put in safety measures to protect travellers after two Canadian tourists – Connor Hayes, 25, and Joanna Lam, 24,– died when their campervan was swept off State Highway 6 by a slip on Haast Pass in a storm in September 2013.

Transport Agency acting system manager Colin Hey previously said permanent highway safety barrier gates were installed on two sections of the SH6 in South Westland after ex-cyclone Fehi in 2018.

'They will only be used in extreme weather or similar emergency events where it is necessary to close the road to protect life and limb. '

National West Coast MP Maureen Pugh said more money was needed for stopbank, road and bridge maintenance.

She was confident contractors could reopen roads quickly. 'The sun comes out the ground dries out and we fix it and get on with it,' she said.

'It's the terrain we live in. We're designed to cope …That kind of volume of rain if that happened elsewhere around the country it would be much worse than it is here. We will be up and running before long,' she said.

THE COST OF EXTREME WEATHER

Transport Minister Phil Twyford said the Government was concerned about the effect of increasingly frequent and extreme weather events on the West Coast.

'I appreciate that part of the incredible beauty of the West Coast is it's rugged remoteness. Unfortunately this means your towns are more susceptible to being cut off after storms and floods,' he said.

Increasingly frequent extreme weather events are affecting much of the country with costs to the state highway network doubling from $36m in 2014-15 to $72m in 2018-19.

The Government had spent $6.6m on the Waiho River bridge repairs and $7.8m on fixing erosion of SH6 at Punakaiki.

'Tourism is now the fastest growing part of the economy on the Coast and safe, reliable access is necessary to ensure it continues to grow,' Twyford said.

NZTA would also be carrying out maintenance work on 133km of West Coast roads this summer.