Major roadworks required to reach isolated Awatere Valley farmers

Tuesday, 20 July 2021

A chunk of road washed away is one of several obstacles for Awatere Valley Rd residents in south Marlborough.

Lengthy roadworks will be needed to reach a high country community cut off by the weekend’s severe weather, a roading boss warns.

Awatere Valley Rd in south Marlborough is blocked at several points, by large landslides and wide potholes, after heavy rain at the weekend caused severe flooding and breached riverbanks. The Marlborough region has been in a state of emergency since Saturday.

The Awatere River is full and muddy after heavy rain at the weekend.

The damage has cut off access to several farms in the high country valley, for whom the closest township is Seddon, about 50 kilometres up the road. The other end at Molesworth Station is closed for the winter.

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Marlborough Roads manager Steve Murrin said the first blockage his team came to during reconnaissance on Monday afternoon was a chunk of the road missing, about 10 metres by 10m, near Isis Stream.

The hillside Awatere Valley Rd has washed away in parts.

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“So that’s as far up the road as we got … and that alone is going to be quite a major fix,” Murrin said.

A farm in the Awatere Valley inundated with flooding after the heavy rain.

A crew would need to cut a ramp into the side of the hole to get a digger in, to build a retaining wall for the hillside road.

“It’s going to take some time. There will only be room for one digger, but there will be a lot of earth moving for that one digger, probably 1000 cubic metres of backfill. And we can’t run truck-and-trailers on this little road, it will be trucks only.”

Vineyards in the Awatere Valley flooded as waterways spill over their banks.

Marlborough Roads staff were able to survey the rest of the road by helicopter on Tuesday, Murrin said.

A truck driver's view of a flooded SH6 near Canvastown on Saturday July 17 during wide spread flooding in the top of the south.

“We’re hearing there’s a lot more damage further up the road.”

Mount Gladstone farmer Hayley Pitts was one of the farmers cut off by the damage on Awatere Valley Rd, and is now facing a mammoth clean-up task on her merino and cattle farm.

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“The rain really started on Friday night – we went from the big high of being in town for the Groundswell protest, and feeling really proud to be a Kiwi farmer, and then we had all that heavy rain that night, it was so loud we got up in the night and the river was just massive,” Pitts said.

“We couldn’t go anywhere, because the creek right by our house was huge, and you have to go over the creek to get out … We still haven’t really been able to assess how much damage there is because all our creek crossings are out.”

Pitts’ drinking water pipe had been broken by the flooding where it crossed Station Stream, one of many waterways up the valley feeding the swollen Awatere River.

But she managed to fix the water pipe on Monday, she said.

“So we’ve got water, we’ve got power, we’ve got the internet, and we’re all safe, so everything is fine, but it has been quite disruptive, pretty chaotic … We’ve just been shovelling the mud and silt out of the shed, pulling out all these sticks and stuff that came down in the river, pulling all that out of fences.

“We’ve just been so busy, we’re only just starting the cleanup now. But there is an amazing community up here, and we all help each other, we're all keeping in contact really well.”

Awatere Valley Rd was “just gone” in places, where the river had “cut into the road”, and there were also several landslides covering the road, Pitts said.

“And we’re all in the dark about how long it will last. But after the [2016] quake we were stuck up here for nine weeks, so we’re used to it.”

The region had more than 300 millimetres of rain between Thursday and Sunday, MetService said.

The Awatere River flow peaked about 525 cubic metres per second at Awapiri on Saturday at noon, and just over 500m3 at the river mouth, according to the Marlborough District Council’s river data. It dropped to under 50m3 per second by Monday.

Murrin said he was unable to give a timeline on when work would start on Awatere Valley Rd. He needed to take advice from his geotechnical engineer, he said.

It was one of many damaged roads isolating Marlborough communities, along with Queen Charlotte Drive, Kenepuru Rd, Waihopai Valley Rd, Kaiuma Bay Rd, Moetapu Bay Rd, and Northbank Rd.

MetService was forecasting another low pressure system moving over the country on Wednesday and Thursday, though it was unlikely to produce as much rain as the weekend.

The council advised anyone cut off and needing essential supplies to contact the council’s customer service centre on 03 520 7400, or in an emergency dial 111.

Farmers running out of feed for their stock due to the recent storm were advised to register feed needs through 0800 FARMING to be connected with the Feed Coordination Service. Anyone with feed to donate or available for sale was also asked to register through the same number. Those without phone coverage could email kate@ruraldirections.co.nz.