While the rain may have eased for the Bay of Plenty, there is still much work to be done around the district, and Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s rivers and drainage team are out and about getting it done.

The size of the repair and remediation jobs vary across the regional council’s four major river schemes, but there was a big task to be done last week in the Kaituna Catchment Control Scheme, with serious erosion repairs required on the Ohineangaanga Stream downstream of the Washer Road bridge washout in Te Puke.

Debris washed down by the heavy rain had caused the stream to push hard into the left-hand-side bank, which is about eight to 10 metres high, causing serious erosion.

“This erosion exposed a main gas line, which meant our team needed to act quickly to find a short-term solution to stop any further erosion and protect the gas line as much as possible before long-term works could be completed,” says rivers and drainage operations manager Dan Batten.

Regional Council’s engineering and rivers and drainage teams put their heads together and developed a temporary solution: dig out the debris in the stream to re-channel the stream back through the centre, then place huge sandbags of rock and sand along the left to help support the redirection. This would reduce further erosion by keeping water away from the bank.

With the help of local contractors, the teams pulled a long day and got it done as planned. Dan says it attracted a few spectators too, “as you don’t see a 130-tonne crane lifting a two-tonne excavator into the stream every day”.

“While this ‘outside the box’ solution was not our team’s usual practice, it was an emergency, temporary solution carried out between significant weather events to protect this important infrastructure and support local employers.”

Long-term works are in the pipeline, and a permanent fix will take some months to plan and complete.