Surface flooding and river levels affecting farmland and roads

Flood warnings are still in place for several rivers, but many rivers have peaked and are starting to fall.

Saturated catchments, snow melt and spring weather has contributed to high river flows and significant surface flooding.

Environment Southland catchment operations manager Randal Beal said farmers should continue to monitor river levels and move stock away from low-lying areas.

“The impacts people are seeing are largely as a result of surface flooding and an overwhelmed drainage network, rather than flooding from our rivers.”

“We have teams out assessing water levels and any impacts on stop bank infrastructure today. We are aware of erosion and a breach of the stop bank on the Aparima River near Avondale. This is impacting localised farmland but otherwise contained.”

Damage assessments have started and will continue next week as lower river levels allow access to the stop banks.

There are 14 sites at Flood Warning status and 19 at High River Watch.

There has been no rain across the region since midnight last night and river levels continue to fall.

The Mataura River is peaking at the top of the catchment and expected to peak at Gore around 9pm this evening. It’s likely to be around 1500 cumecs. For comparison, in the February 2020 flood the river peaked at 2400 cumecs.

Waikaia Catchment

• Flood peak has passed through our lowest recorder station on the Waikaia at Mahers Beach at 2.77m above normal at 3.35am this morning
  Mataura Catchment
• The flood peak has passed through Fairlight, Parawa and Cattle Flat (3.6m above normal). There has been some over-topping of the stop banks in this area. However, the river levels continue to fall.
• The river flows are within stop bank design at Gore, Mataura township and Wyndham but flooding is expected in the lower catchment area including Seaward Downs.
• The peak is expected to be 1500 cumecs at Gore around 9pm tonight.

Aparima Catchment

• The flood peak passed through Thornbury (3.21m above normal) early this morning and flowed out to Jacobs River Estuary.
• There has been three sites where the river has over-topped.
  Oreti Catchment
• Although the flood peak has passed through Centre Bush (2.72m above normal at 7.40am), further flooding is expected in the lower reaches of the catchment with the peak expected at Wallacetown around 4pm this afternoon (at 4.1m above normal, 1350cumecs).
• The Waihopai River at the Waihopai Dam is currently rising and is 3.09m above normal. It’s like to peak at around 2.30pm today).

Waiau Catchment

• The flood peak passed through Tuatapere at 3.8m above normal late last night.
  Otautau Stream
• The flood peak passed through Otautau Stream at 2.58m above normal early this morning.
  Makarewa Catchment
• Counsell Road is expected to peak mid-afternoon today.
• SH99 Lorneville to Wallacetown and State Highway 6 is closed between Branxholme -Makarewa Road and Breeze Road.

For the latest river levels visit: https://www.es.govt.nz/environment/flood-warning

A state of emergency is still in place for Southland. For further information on this, please head to the Emergency Management Southland Facebook page www.facebook.com/cdsouthland