Waimakariri Stopbank upgrade completion- a success story

Aaron Campbell from Aaron Campbell - Fendalton-Waimairi-Harewood Board

Today we celebrated success.
ECan and the Christchurch, Selwyn and Waimakariri councils celebrated the completion of the stopbank upgrades that have been in planning and construction for about 15 years, it came in under time and under the $40m budget. They protect over $8Billion of infrastructure and assets and are engineered to handle a 6500 cumec (flood) event- that is big! There were initial stopbanks built from the 1930s but the 1956 flood taught a hard lesson for our city. In the 2000s river engineers took another look and it was decided that we needed further protection.
As a community board member for Harewood, I've been part of the river rating committee that spans the regional council and territorial authorities. It has been a fantastic experience with great management of the project by probably the best river engineers and a number of construction firms.

To give you an idea of how big of a deal this was, present were our three Mayors- Dalziel, Broughton and Ayers, ECan council and three Crown Ministers- Nania Mahuta - Min of Local Govt, James Shaw- Min of Climate Change and Peeni Henare- Min. of Civil Defence jointly dubbed the Ministers of Resilience by Mayor Dalziel.