Michael Booker, Senior Engineering Officer at Nelson City Council is involved with the Maitai project this year and has been tasked with looking at the ford way sites and future gravel management strategies for the Maitai River.
He emailed us with his plans and actions to date:
- Fish survey work to see what is currently in and around the Almond Tree Flats & Waahi Taakaro ford sites. Further work will be done through the seasons to get a better understanding of what is moving up and down the river, and to aid any fish passage design work if that will be appropriate. There are strong currents near the culverts and there have been dogs washed through in the past. This prompted the placing of large rocks in front of the culverts but that obstructs fish passage and is not really acceptable. If people are warned of the strong currents then they swim or take their dogs there at their own risk. This week we will be removing the large rocks and opening up the culverts to flow that is currently spilling over the top.
- Looking into suitability of the fords, improvement if possible or if in fact they should come out and replaced with Council funded bridges to maintain access requirements. Mike is expecting a public submission document to be going out next year prior to a report going up to Council with some recommendations for the ford sites.
- Camping, washing of vehicles and dumping of rubbish at the Almond tree ford site. In order to improve things a vehicle barrier and signage is being installed to limit access only to those authorised to use the ford, and to warn about strong currents for swimming.
The signs are now up and Tom Kennedy will be working with Nelmac to do this work which is expected to be done on Thursday this week. For information I have attached the barrier plan and signs that have been put up already.
The council is mindful of the passion people have for the Maitai River and it is a true asset to the people of Nelson. The Council recognise this and have taken a big step to improving the health of the river by instigating many related projects this year that will start the process of improvement.
The Council is still in the early stages and are just starting to gather more information about the issues and access requirements for future projects before circulating more information to the project teams. A number of the FOM group have expressed their interest in these projects and have already assisted with the fish survey work. Mike is also just in the process of getting a scope of work proposal from NIWA to progress the Maitai Gravel Management Strategy and will share the outcome of this report when it becomes available.
Tom Kroos, Ecologist at Fish and Wildlife New Zealand is working at the Almond Tree flats ford on the 23rd October and explained to us what’s happening there at the moment:
During the past week fish monitoring has been taking place up and down from the ford and it was concluded that the fish were not finding a passage through. Today fish had been removed before the ford and placed further downstream to get them out of harm’s way while work is done on the ford.
Large rocks that were placed in front of the holes under the ford last year are carefully being removed to reopen the passage for the fish to travel upstream as the whitebait will be starting their travels soon.
This has to be done with great care not to disturb too much sediment. This seems to be a careful balancing act of little bits and one hole at a time.
Another worker on site assured us that council is mindful that last year this work was done poorly and had caused too much disturbance and are taking great care to keep sediment disturbance to an absolute minimum.