Big rain, big pain, big cost - Canterbury's week of flooding devastation

Friday, 4 June 2021

Beef and dairy farmer Rob Withers saw his Springburn farm, near Mt Somers, ravaged in the Canterbury floods, the geography of the land itself entirely redrawn by the power of the water.

An intensively farmed region of Canterbury lying between the north branch of the Ashburton/Hakatere and Hinds rivers was one of the hardest-hit by this week's floods. Reporter MARTIN VAN BEYNEN spent four days in the area assessing the impact.

Farmers in Mid-Canterbury knew it would be bad.

When the MetService issued a red alert for the Canterbury region on Friday, May 28, they prepared for some sleepless nights and a rough weekend.

The MetService warned that 200-300 millimetres of rain was expected to “accumulate” about the high country between 3pm on Saturday and 11am on Monday. The rain would cause dangerous river conditions and significant flooding, the agency said.

The south branch of the Ashburton River is on the left of the picture between the trees. The river burst its banks and ruined hundreds of hectares of good pasture land.

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James Burnside clung onto an empty bottle to survive as he was swept down the flooded Okuku River in North Canterbury.

It got most of it right. The rivers would be dangerous and the flooding would also be significant, although the word “disastrous” would have been more apt.

The rainfall forecast turned out to have significantly under-estimated the downpour for the high country in the Mt Somers and Alford Forest area.

This catchment feeds a network of rivers and streams which end up as the Ashburton/Hakatere River near the town of Ashburton, where it runs under the bridge on the main highway. The downpour at Mt Somers was an astounding 551mm over Saturday and Sunday.

The north and south branches of the Ashburton/Hakatere River start a long way apart in the high country.

Two streams – Taylors Stream and Bowyers Stream – flow into the south branch at Ashburton Forks, about 15km from Mt Somers, and create an obvious trouble spot for flooding. This was where the road was gouged out in several places as culverts failed to cope with the river flow and debris.

It was where a white ute with a father and his 7-year-old son on board foundered. The pair were going to Methven, along Thompsons Track, and were found wet and cold by a local farmer at 5pm on Sunday and taken home. “Not my best father moment,” the driver told his rescuer. They could easily have been fatalities of the flood.

Ashburton farmer Lee-Anne Stewart inspects a washed out cow lane.

There is a lot of highly productive, intensively farmed land between the two branches of the Ashburton River. Many farmers have invested heavily in irrigation and farm infrastructure and produce the milk, meat and wool that is still the backbone of the country's economy. They employ hundreds of workers and keep a host of contractors in work.

The land is vulnerable. Docile streams can quickly turn into the expression of the day – raging torrents – during high rainfall. But nobody had seen anything like last weekend, when both branches of the Ashburton River, and Taylors Stream, burst their banks.

Darryl Butterick organised a rescue operation that saw neighbour Paul Adams plucked from a tree on Sunday morning. The 170ha deer, beef and sheep farm Butterick and wife Lyn run is a “bloody shambles”, he says.

What’s the fuss about?

On Wednesday, only a couple of days after scenes of roiling brown water everywhere, the sun is shining.

Driving along the Ashburton-Staveley Rd towards Mt Somers and Alford Forest, with fresh snow on the ranges, it could be hard to see what all the fuss is about. The road runs between the north and south branches and ends at Staveley, near Taylors Stream.

The water has mostly receded and pastures on either side of the road look a picture. The reality is very different.

Lee-Anne and Norm Stewart's 240 hectare, 800-cow dairy farm is on Rawles Crossing Rd, about a 20-minute drive from Ashburton, just before the branches of the Ashburton River merge. Fortunately they have dried off their cows because there is no way a milk tanker would get down their road.

Lincoln University students Brittney Matthews (left) and Anna Gregan, who volunteered to help out with the clean-up, by salvaging fence posts, at Rob and Jane Withers' beef and dairy farm at Springburn near Mt Somers.

A deep mud hole nearly swallowed their brand new $170,000 John Deere tractor. It had to be pulled out by a digger and is probably a write-off. About 15ha of their once immaculate property is currently cut off from the rest of the farm by water. In the next six weeks before calving starts, the couple, who employ four staff, will have to replace fences, fix washed-out tracks and think about bringing in feed.

Down the road, Darryl and Lyn Butterick are in worse shape. Their 170ha deer, beef and sheep farm runs between the two branches and has been rendered a “bloody shambles”, Darryl says.

About 7.15am on Sunday he spotted a light flickering in a tree near Walkhams Rd, which runs from the Ashburton-Staveley Rd to the north branch of the river. The light was neighbour Paul Adams’ head torch. Adams had been swept away in the dark when he was trying to get his 200 heifer yearlings to safer ground.

Butterick immediately began organising a rescue operation and Adams was eventually plucked from the tree, about 10.50am, by a local helicopter pilot.

“It could have been untidy,” Butterick says on Wednesday.

Many of the heifers Adams was trying to rescue have ended up dead in willows and shelter belts on the Buttericks’ farm. Some have ended up in their deer yards. Adams could have suffered the same fate.

A 4 hectare paddock of pasture on Rob Withers' farm was completely inundated by water flowing through a break in the Taylors Stream stopbank.

On Wednesday, a crew of mates and volunteers are collecting dead heifers and returning live ones to Adams. Most of the Buttericks’ deer fencing has gone and five sire stags are missing, probably dead. Large chunks of the farm are covered in silt and shingle.

Richard and Chrissie Wright, who farm 1850ha at Mt Somers between the south branch and Bowyers Stream, now have a new river where they previously had an impressive expanse of productive pasture. The south branch breached its stop bank and took a new course over their land, delivering a thick carpet of silt, boulders and trees. Overall they reckon they have lost 200ha of formerly good land.

Aerial views lay bare the extent of damage to the Canterbury Plains around Mt Somers following last weekend's torrential downpours. The wider river channels in the foregrounds were newly-created by the floods.

The damage on Rob and Jane Withers’ 450ha dairy and beef farm at Springburn, beside Taylors Stream, is just as spectacular but on a smaller scale. A 4ha paddock Rob developed with his father lies under a thick layer of boulders, silt and trees. Across the road, on their run-off block, a shelter belt above swede and rape paddocks has been blown out across winter feed.

Rob has a big job ahead but is more worried about another rainstorm.

“The main concern is this river (Taylors Stream) can come down at any time now and potentially wipe out quite a lot of our flat, plus the bridge and the road. We need to get the river contained. If the river has another go, we’re buggered.”

Always someone worse off

Farmers don’t like to seem like moaners and all assured me there were other farmers much worse off.

Chris and Anne-Marie Allen have a 300ha sheep and beef farm on Thompsons Track, near Taylors Stream, which burst its banks and forged a new and destructive path through their farm on Sunday. They are strong contenders for the worst-hit farm in the area.

Chris Allen's grandfather was known as Happy Jack and Chris has inherited his positive streak. He will need it in coming months. In addition to sorting out his own troubles, he is busy advocating for the area and talking to local and central government and other farmers in his role as a Federated Farmers representative.

On Tuesday, he and Anne-Marie host Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who flies in by Air Force helicopter bringing wine, chocolates, tea and green milk. Anne-Marie makes scones.

The day before Allen took us up a waterlogged farm track to his irrigation pond, a 6ha, 800mm deep, water storage facility vital to the farm. The track now divides the farm into a good side and a bad side.

Richard and Chrissie Wright survey the damage on their property at Mt Somers after the south branch of the Ashburton River breached its stopbank and flooded hectares of pasture.

“This is a magnitude of 10 above anything we could have expected. It's horrendous. We need to get everything reinstated as quickly as possible,” he says.

Water is still running fast down the bad side where pasture and winter feed crops are strewn with logs and debris, much of it, ironically, from river protection works. From the track we can see sheep and cattle moving along strands of high ground. This is a good sign, although Chris doesn't know how many have perished.

“They are moving freely. That will make us sleep a lot easier tonight,” he says.

It will be days before he can reach some of them. A row of silage bales in white plastic has been picked up and thrown against a new fence. The irrigation pond is a mess. The intake has been badly damaged, banks have washed away and the pond is full of debris. To the untrained eye, torrents of water seem to be rushing everywhere.

His whole irrigation system – culverts, pumps, irrigators, gear boxes, generators, piping – has been damaged, and major earthworks will be required to restore the farm to some sort of order.

The Allens prided themselves on running a good operation.

“This year … we really thought we had nailed it. Then this comes along. Nature is a good leveller,” Chris says.

Bouncing back

Hard work ahead. The day starts at Lee-Anne Stewart’s farm.

On Wednesday river engineers from Environment Canterbury (ECan) are flying up and down the rivers in a helicopter to assess the damage and come up with a repair plan.

Richard and Chrissie Wright, who run about 7000 dairy and beef stock, have already started. A contractor using a bulldozer has started work on plugging the gap where the south branch smashed through its stop bank and ruined the Wright’s lower pastures.

“We need to plug the gap, so the water can go back to where it was. Then we can see whether we can reclaim some of our land or not. It may be uneconomic to retrieve all this. What do you do when all the topsoil has gone? ECan don’t seem to have a plan. They are just spinning around and don’t have a clue. Every day we’re losing more soil.”

Chrissie says they will have to remove at least some of the debris, so their pivot irrigator can function.

“It’s going to be a massive job,” she says.

Insurance will cover some losses, but farmers face lost production and repairing some damage at their own cost. Most farmers can’t insure their fencing and some farms will need up to $500,000 worth of restoration work. The Government will have to stump up more cash than the $500,000 promised so far, to convince them they are being taken seriously.

“We are all in the same boat,” says Richard, who reckons he is looking at a $500,000 bill just on his farm. “You could go around all these farmers, and you’ll get the same story. It’s just a big scale here. There will be people worse off.”

They have been overwhelmed by the offers of help. Richard says farmers are on the phone every night to support each other.

“A lot of farmers out there are struggling mentally.”

Darryl Butterick is too busy to stew over his troubles. He needs to get his hinds off his farm, so he can repair the deer fences. But before he can truck them off the property, he needs to fix his deer yards.

He takes us to his top boundary, where the north branch has broken through its stop bank and spewed a layer of stony silt over hectares of his pasture.

“There wasn’t a stone on this country before this. It’s going to be a massive job to get rid of the shingle.”

The damage was predictable, he says.

“We’ve been on to the bloody river engineers … they have been mismanaging these rivers for years. We’ve been telling them it will bite you in the a… one day.”

Asked what is going through his mind as he looks at the damage, he says:

“The cost. The trees and the infrastructure. Everything we have slogged our guts out getting it to where it’s nice, really nice and its f…… gone. You have to start again. All you can do is chip away.”

Lee-Anne Stewart is counting her blessings as well as the damage as she looks out over ponding water on the paddock below her house. The house was surrounded by water on Sunday when floodwaters threatened to engulf their lower-lying workers’ houses. Everyone spent the night in the homestead.

Prone to understatement, she says it’s “not going to be a quick fix”.

“It will be a lot of hard work. It is devastating, but farmers are resilient. We’ll bounce back pretty quick. Today is a lot better than yesterday.”