Tenders to be called for flood wall

Press, 24 May 1988, Page 4

Tenders to be called for flood wall

Tenders will be called immediately for the construction of the Blaketown flood wall in the Preston Road area, the Westland Catchment Board decided at its meeting yesterday.

The Greymouth borough representative on the board, Mr Fred Holmes, said that the work required a sense of urgency. “The devastation and destruction in the Preston Road area is unbelievable,” he said.

Reclamation approvals had been “apparently held up by the wildlife areas involved in the building of the bank.”

The amount of wildlife reserve was negligible, he said, in comparison to the value of people, sections and property. Mr Holmes said that it was also time to dismantle the damaged Greymouth wharf and proceed with the wall in the commercial area of the town.

Preliminary scheme plaruj were prepared by

'the board in 1982, he said. The Conservation Department had been in existence only since April 1 last year, “but even then did not receive an application for approval for the Blaketown section of the scheme until February 22 this year.

“The board had been remiss in that aspect, but it must now proceed with the utmost urgency on the construction of the bank,” said Mr Holmes.

“We know it is illegal, but if the department wants to stop us, it must take out an injunction against us,” he said. The board’s operations manager, Mr Brian Fauth, said that it had tried in vain to get a blanket approval to the whole scheme, “so we took it up on a piecemeal basis.”

Mr Fauth said restructuring of Government departments had much to do with the delays. Before the restructuring, the board had held discussions with the

Service and the West Coast Acclimatisation Society and “things had been virtually sorted out. But the department wanted to go through the whole procedure again.” As a new organisation, the department had wanted to ensure that the correct procedures were being fallowed. The delays were “not really anyone’s fault. It is the way that the Government changed the rules.”