The BIG NEWS! - Our River Plan is Live!
And the 2022 WAG AGM will be on 28th June at 5:45 p.m. at the South Wairarapa Working Men’s Club - dining room at the rear. everyone welcome, please join us there, it’s all good news!
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News and events for our Waiohine Catchment
Waiohine Action Group (WAG) AGM for 2021
13th February 2022: For those who are interested, this storm has not produced a major flood event. The Waiōhine peaked at 400 cubic metres of water per second (cumecs) last evening (compared to over 2,000 cumecs for our stop bank design flow in the new Waiōhine Living River Plan) after the maximum rainfall intensity occurred in the upper catchment mid-afternoon yesterday. No doubt, this has moved gravel around and we will be able to indicate any concerns in coming days.
At the Angle Knob rain gauge in the Tararuas there has been 180mm since Friday morning with a peak intensity of 17mm per hour. We saw a number of events in the 1980’s and 1990’s with considerably higher readings at this site. We had a rule of thumb that 25mm per hour would generally cause a flood warning alert for the river level, but the actual flow would depend upon the rainfall pattern in the “Y” shaped catchment deep in the heart of the Tararuas.
The Ruamahanga at Martinborough looks to be peaking this morning at about 850 cumecs compared to the design flow of the stop banks in that area of 1,500, although they have carried about 1,700 before overtopping. The bridge at Martinborough is closed because NZTA do this because of the shallow depth of the piles on the bridge. The overflow channel at nearby Jenkins Dip also operates at these levels to also protect the bridge.
Thanks to Colin Wright for this analysis.
July 2021 Planting Days - Kuratawhiti Street re-wilding.
Our first planting days have been phenomenally successful. There is a worldwide shortage of NZ native trees! What to do? Around twenty folks potted up or grew from seed local native trees and donated mulch. GWRC donated posts, wire and tree protectors. Over two mornings, about forty community members and intrepid Kuranui students popped them into the cleared and prepared land at the end of Kuratawhiti Street, in carefully chosen spots under the expert guidance of Michael Roera and Bruce Slater – who with Tony Waters and Bob Chambers of the WAG project team, organized the event.
It was such a success it's looking like an annual event. Another small but vital step towards realising the community’s vision for our beautiful river.
21st June 2021 - View of SH2 Bridge showing groynes protecting Urupa and near side beach. Courtesy Bob Chambers
Heavy rain showers over the preceding few days. The river is running at approximately 240 cubic metres per second. current thinking (yep, pun intended) is that a 1% (average once every hundred year) plus climate change flood would run at approximately 2,100 cubic metres per second. The bridge is designed to handle that but the build up of gravel banks and beaches, where the gravel settles and creates an “armour layer” could be a serious threat to town, Urupa, town water supply and so on; so have to be either extracted without disturbing the water or significant flora and fauna, or encouraged to disperse when the river is high.
The Wai ō Hine I Rakahanga River Plan
The Waiōhine River Plan
Incorporating the Waiōhine FloodPlain Management Plan
Published as Draft Version 2.5 June 7th 2021