Dept rejects blame

Press, 24 May 1988, Page 12

Dept rejects blame

THE Department of Conservation has rejected assertions by the Mayor of Greymouth, Dr Barry Dallas, that it was to blame for slow progress on the town’s flood protection scheme. The department also disputes the editorial in “The Press” yesterday.

The department’s West Coast regional manager, Mr Bruce Watson, said yesterday that the department had been doing all it can to speed up approval of the scheme — in spite of the fact that the proposal went back years, and that the department had only recently been involved with two small parts of the overall scheme.

“One proposal is for works along the riverbank beside the railway line, which we only received notice of just over a month ago and which we are still waiting for further information on,” said Mr Watson. “The other proposal is for a stopbank on the Blaketown Lagoon. The borough council itself has caused a delay here by trying to use the flood control scheme to create additional residential areas on land that it doesn’t even own — it is in fact a Crown Wildlife Reserve.” Mr Watson said that his de-

partment had had a number of “difficult” meetings with organisations involved with the scheme. He said that local agreements had been reached for the stopbank, to end illegal dumping and reclamation on the area, to plan a new road link and to landscape the area for public enjoyment.

“If the council had been more co-operative in the first place, then the whole process would have been sorted out by now," said Mr Watson. “We have gone out of our way to help Greymouth complete its flood protection scheme — I’m very disturbed that Mayor Dallas should now try to use D.O.C. as a scapegoat and make inaccurate claims.

“Even if the council had obtained immediate approval for the scheme, there’s still no way it would have been completed in time to protect Blaketown from Friday morning’s flood,” Mr Watson said.

Mr Watson said that his department' had every sympathy for victims of the flood and that D.O.C. staff had assisted with the clean-up after the flood. In a statement to the Westland Catchment Board meeting yester-

day, the department also said that the department had been in existence only since April 1 last year. Even then the department did not receive an application for approval under the Harbours Act for the Blaketown section of the scheme till February 23 this year. The department added: “This whole sorry state of affairs has come about because no party involved in the long history of this matter has seriously considered, and until recently even sought, the necessary approval under the Harbours Act for the Blaketown Scheme.

, “After looking carefully through background material we have become convinced that it is only through D.O.C.’s efforts that some co-ordination in Harbour Act approval has occurred to the extent that parties can now proceed in agreement. “We are now confident that with only minor changes to one plan (showing stop bank curvature) the Blaketown proposal can be sent to the Minister. “Given that at least five major floods have occurred since this scheme was first mooted in the 19705, D.O.C.’s efforts in three months are something of a record.”