Warren Maher, Waikato Regional Councillor

News of Thames Coromandel region

Welcome to my first column to update readers on my experiences as your elected councillor, council activities and issues good and bad from around our region. Since my election in October, it has been a whirlwind five months with five full council meetings, 26 workshops and 11 other meetings and inductions. There are eight new councillors and six re-elected, so quite a few personalities around the table and a lot of different backgrounds. I chair the Strategy and Policy committee and sit on three other committees and two joint working groups as well as the TCDC Shoreline Management committee. This allows interests of the Thames Coromandel to be well represented and provides me with plenty of reading. As readers are well aware, these last three months have been really challenging with six significant rainfall events including two tropical cyclones since January 2023. WRC staff have inspected 60 river sites resulting in 120 plus actions. The Pinnacles rain gauge had 2367mm of rain from 1 January to 28 February. Large amounts of sediment have been deposited around the catchment and it is common to see our harbours turning brown very quickly when it rains. On the bright side, Whitianga and Hauraki teams got straight to business thanks to effective systems and external relationships, with a large amount of flexibility with everyone brought in taking up different roles. Work on remediation happened quickly thanks to efficient identification of needs, and getting new team members up to speed quickly and good working relationships with contractors who allocated us time and resources. It was great to see staff having wellbeing checks as well as strong health and safety knowledge and implementation. With up to 18 months for river management and three to five years catchment work ahead as a result of the past three months, councillors have been petitioning central Government for more financial support for the recovery work; the latest, a meeting with Michael Woods, the regions recovery Minister. There has been a focus on hard infrastructure (roads etc) but equally important is the soft infrastructure remedial work which supports the health of our rivers and streams from the mountains to the sea. We have all seen what happens when water