South Dunedin Was “Severely Neglected”

South Dunedin residents attended The Nations Church in King Edward Street on Monday night for a meeting about the effects of a devastating flood that caused lasting damage to the community almost nine months ago. 

Flooding caused damage to 1250 properties as 175mm of rainfall fell over one 24-hour period, the equivalent of two months rainfall in just one day. 

The floods hit “the lowest lying area with the largest population in New Zealand,” according to the first speaker at the event, Dunedin South MP, Clare Curran. 

The second speaker, Bruce Hendry, a former city surveyor of 32 years for the Dunedin City Council, who spent nine of those on the Drainage and Sewage Board, said: “In my experience, this flood should have been a nuisance but not the disaster it was.”

Curran also claimed the “southern side of Dunedin has been severely neglected for many years” and that the flooding should “not have happened although we are yet to find out why it did.” 

In response to the accusation of ‘severe neglect,’ Dave Cull assured us, “that’s simply not true”, adding that “continually pointing the finger definitively takes away from the fact that we have a sea level rise and we deflect attention away from it at our peril.”

Cull’s references to sea-level rises being one of the main explanations drew Curran to mention: “We should not confuse poor decision-making, poor management and poor systems with a slow but inevitable sea-level rise,” 

No explanation has been given as yet for the reasons behind flood, although Cull said the report on whether the drainage system and mud tanks were responsible would be with us “within a month.”  

Cull said the “overall belief is that it was an extreme event and we believe, even if the whole system was operating optimally, there would’ve been flooding because it couldn’t have coped after a certain point.” 

He said that the community is becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of an explanation, and are asking: “how long does it take?” [To disclose the reasons behind the flooding]. He said that his “answer is now: “too long.””

What is needed is “a proper chain of command to make sure the pumps are working and even turned on properly and contingency plans available if they don’t work… [We also need] reassurances on the responsiveness of civil defence” according to Curran.

This article first appeared in Issue 3, 2016.
Posted 11:29am Sunday 13th March 2016 by Joe Higham.