Depth of despair: Holiday park bracing for flood after authorities stall on stream fix

Friday, 3 April 2026

An East Coast holiday park owner says it’s a matter of time before he suffers another devastating flood after NZTA and his local council failed to carry out “promised” work.

Te Araroa Holiday Park was evacuated after logs, rocks and silt swept through it when a large landslide occurred during heavy rain in late January.

The landslide devastated a family’s home, forcing them on to the roof, and blocked State Highway 35.

The holiday park and a popular burger café that operates inside it were forced to close.

Holiday park owner Bill Martin and café owner Nina McClutchie have spent months cleaning up the site, with the assistance of friends, the army and others.

The gravel and debris brought down in the landslide raised the bed of a stream that flows through the park, which included 15 cabins or flats, 110 campsites and associated buildings.

Martin, who has run the holiday park for 21 years, said the stream used to be about 1.7m deep. He knows this because that’s roughly his height and he’s spent plenty of time over the years removing items from it.

He said NZTA and the council worked together to get the highway reopened and assisted in the partial clearing of the streambed and building small bunds (barriers) on either side of it. The two organisations were working on a “longer-term solution”.

He had been told the plan was to use diggers to get the streambed back to its original depth, and that had not happened.

“It’s only 70cm deep now. That means every time it rains, like last weekend, it overflows and we have heaps of mud and silt and everything else flowing down through the camp and getting us back to where we started,” Martin said.

“Everything we cleaned out is all back again. Two months after the flood and it’s back to how it was. When we get a decent heavy rain, I’d hate to think what will happen,” he said.

Martin had expressed his dissatisfaction to Gisborne District Council, but said nothing appeared to be happening.

“They’re telling me I’m not an expert, and they’re right, but surely common sense should prevail? I know it’s not an easy job, but until it’s done, we and our neighbours will be at the mercy of that stream.

“What we’re guts-aching about is that we were promised certain things and they haven’t delivered.”

He said the stream used to be about 3m wide and now “it’s probably 5-6m wide”.

Martin said a 200m stretch of the waterway needed to be deepened.

“It’s the depth that’s the problem. It’s virtually flat. As long as it’s like this we’re under threat. So are the neighbours,” he said.

Since January’s flood, McClutchie’s café, 35 Eat Street, had remained closed, and the holiday park, which had been fully booked until the Easter weekend, had only been used by road workers.

“We don’t want to open to the public because it’s a mess,” said Martin. “It’s not the sort of place to want to have a holiday at the moment.”

An NZTA spokesperson said the agency was responsible for the management of the stream within the road reserve, which extends either side of the bridge structure, and the council was responsible for ongoing management of the wider stream.

The council’s recovery manager, Naomi Whitewood, said it had completed initial river engineering and hydrology assessments, but the stream did not sit within the council’s river management activity, so “our role is to support development of recovery plans that will be community-led, and co-ordinate implementation”.

“Initial assessments identified there is still an ongoing risk of flooding and a very real concern for affected landowners and the wider community,” Whitewood said.

“Conditions for the safety of buildings and residents have been put in place to reduce any risk to people, and we are continuing to stay in regular contact with those most directly affected,” she said.

“There is no simple or quick-fix solution. Long-term management will require further assessment of the wider catchment and development of options in partnership with the community, [local iwi] Ngāti Porou and NZTA.

“Council is currently initiating that process, but it will take time to work through the technical, funding and community considerations involved,” Whitewood said.