A tribute to Paddy

Paddy was a valued employee and a well-respected and well-liked colleague. He was a people’s person and he called a spade a spade. At work he was about achieving outcomes, but could change tack if you gave him a convincing enough rationale.

He joined the Council in late 2015, having come from the Waikato Regional Council where he had worked in engineering river/drainage roles since 2007. The news of his impending arrival was met with some raised eyebrows by many in our catchment team who wondered why a North Islander would come so far south.

But Paddy quickly won everyone over with his down to earth manner and good humour, his expertise – he knew his stuff, and his love of the outdoors, particularly hunting and fishing. During his time here he explored Fiordland and many other wild places with family and friends from up north.

He hadn’t long arrived when the Council mounted its response to search out the invasive weed, velvetleaf, which had contaminated fodder beet seed. Paddy’s role was to check out individual reports of potential sightings. This was a great initiation to Southland as he got to travel all over the region.

Paddy was our catchment engineer, managing the work teams for three years before becoming our catchment operations manager in 2018. One of his first achievements was to liaise with organisations and the community to develop the Council’s Environmental Code of Practice for River Works. Its purpose is to set out environmental standards of good practice for all river and drainage works. It provides clarity and has, and continues to, streamline processes, including for consents.

The February floods in 2020 tested the capacity of the Mataura catchment’s flood defences. Paddy was one of the advisors to Civil Defence during the crisis period, on the job during the early hours, and always clear that the stop banks would hold. That they did, was a testament to his knowledge, his team and their work programme.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, the opportunity presented to gain ‘shovel ready’ funding from the Government to boost some of Southland’s flood protection. Paddy worked remotely with our engineer to come up with a proposal for $18.5 million worth of upgrades in the Mataura, Invercargill and Waiau catchments. It was successful.

Later in 2020 Paddy was the engineering face of the public consultation on the ‘shovel ready’ projects and how they might be funded, providing practical explanations and pouring over maps with people.

This year Paddy became our climate resilience manager in charge of all the ‘shovel ready’ projects.

He’d had a long-standing interest in upgrading the ageing pump house that kept the weepy land around Invercargill airport drained and the funding meant he was able to place the order for new pumps from the Netherlands sooner, rather than later.

Each pump will measure 2.5 metres in diameter and 10 metres in length and, importantly, they are fish-friendly. Their design is based on Archimedes’ screw pump technology where fish are transported up through the pump safely, without getting caught up.

It’s sad that Paddy won’t be here to see the projects he cared about come to fruition, but we can all be grateful that he chose to come to Southland and contribute to maintaining and strengthening the resilience of our communities. That is quite a legacy.

You can read the full Envirosouth magazine as a PDF online here.