Soil grant cut slip

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 12

Soil grant cut slip

The day the recent storm lashed Gisborne and caused whole hillsides to slide away, the East Cape Catchment Board was told its soil conservation grant was to be cut back.

The board’s soil conservation planning manager, Mr Trevor Freeman, said it was ironic that the Government was prepared to give millions of dollars in assistance to flood and erosion-hit farmers, while cutting back on measures that would help stop such occurrences in the first place.

The average level of assistance the National Water and Soil Conservation Authority gave to new catchment related schemes in the past was more than 60 per cent of the cost.

However, the Minister of Works, Mr Colman, has asked the authority to review that, and now only 50 per cent of the cost of new projects will be met from Government funds.

The manager of the Ministry of Works and Development’s catchment works section, Mr David Parkin, said the East Cape Catchment Board should not be surprised at the move, as the assistance for irrigation and water supply projects was halved last year. “We have to keep this problem in perspective. The storm was an intense but essentially localised occurrence, similar to what happened in Te Aroha six months ago, and the Hutt Valley in 1976,” Mr Parkin said.

“Only a small area of land has been badly hit. Not

much can be done about such severe storms that spring up from time to time,” he said.

Meanwhile Mr Freeman said 40,000 hectares of hill country has been severely affected by erosion, mostly slip erosion, although there were many areas of deep seated slump erosion, where a whole hillside was cracked open.

“Between 10 and 30 per cent of the severely affected land is now completely bare ground, with no feed available for stock. Most of the slipping in the area is very severe. The slips were very fluid and fast moving, and have gone a long way down the slopes,” he said.

Mr Freeman said the damaged area was centred in Ngatapa, and stretched south to just below Young Nick’s Head, with a smaller area just north of Gisborne City.

“Ironically that is regarded as being more stable land than most in this area. It is a good thing the storm did not centre on some of the really rotten country around here.

“This sort of bad storm hits Gisborne about once every 10 years. But what did the real damage this year was the fact that the ground was already saturated because of earlier rain. The soil just could not cope with the storm on top of everything else,” Mr Freeman said.

He said minor danage had occurred throughout the district, as far north as Tolaga Bay. The only advice he could offer farmers on how

to make their properties safer in the event of similar occurrences in the future was to plant more trees. “Agro-forestry, which might appear to be an attractive option, is not economic in this area.”

The land had to be gently sloped to grow trees on, and there must be good access and no erosion. Mr Freeman said Gisborne hill country met none of these requirements.