The mental and physical toll of repeated flooding

Saturday, 27 June 2026

The Bethany Park campground in Kaiteriteri was covered in a river of mud during the floods last July.

June 27 marks one year since the first of two devastating floods hit Tasman. This week, we reflect on the fall-out, examine the recovery, and ask what does the future hold?

Leaving a stressful job and re-locating to a valley in rural Tasman District, was “good for the soul”, Steve Davis said.

Twenty-five years and several floods later, it was anything but.

Last winter was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, wife Nicola Murray said.

Heavy rain on June 27 turned the Motueka River next to Davis’ farm, 50km southwest of Nelson, into a raging torrent that swept across the property, wiping out fences and covering paddocks with debris.

He had just started repairs, installing thicker fenceposts, when the property near Kohatu off State Highway 6 was hit again.

A couple of acres of the 70 acre beef and dairy farm disappeared as floodwaters washed away most of the remains of the property’s rock walls along the river on July 11, snapping the heavy-duty fenceposts, and leaving gravel nearly a metre high on Davis’ best paddocks.

“Huge furrows” had to be filled in where the river cut through a forest and over his land, he said.

Steve Davis, after a flood nearly 20 years ago, pointing out the height of the floodwater at his home in Golden Downs near Kohatu.

The floodwater didn’t enter the house thanks to a stop bank around it Davis said.

He built the U-shaped bank after the house was flooded in 2005, and it had “saved the house about four times since.”

Last winter almost proved the exception.

“That was actually quite scary,” Davis said.

“[The water] was very close to coming over.“

Davis worried about son’s young family who now lived on the property. He and Murray retired and moved to Motueka about five years ago, but Davis still maintained the farm.

“I certainly feel scared,” he said.

“I’ve got two young granddaughters there.

People whose homes are being repeatedly flooded say they’re suffering mentally, physically and financially. The Motueka River pictured after the floods in July last year.

“You get a lot of rain, you lie awake at night, wondering what’s going to happen.”

In October, Davis suffered a heart attack.

He and Murray believed the impact of the winter floods played a part.

Numerous water rescues were carried out in the Tasman floods last June and July, with teams based in Motueka, Wakefield and Tapawera.

Davis said he “kept at” Tasman District Council to complete river management work next to his farm, which the council recently finished; widening the river, raising a rock wall and reinstating another.

“I’m hopeful that will help.”

The consented property was in an area that was meant to be protected under the zoning of the river, Davis said.

But the couple had watched gravel build up to the same level on the river bank opposite the property as it was before the council lowered the level 15 years ago.

“The only reason I got this latest work done, is because for the first time in my life, I became the squeaky wheel,” he said.

Flooding in 2023 caused just as much damage.

He estimated he had spent around $50,000 cleaning up after floods.

Davis and Murray said they missed out on help from volunteers to repair the land last winter.

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Robyn Bain in Riwaka, near her flooded home in winter 2025.

After re-fencing the southern end of the property in 2023 with “massive” fenceposts, Davis virtually had to do it all again at the age of 69 last year, Murray said.

Last winter’s floods “knocked the stuffing out of him”.

“I do feel that that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for his heart attack,” she said.

“I want him to just be able to rest, and know that his family that is living up there is safe.”

Riwaka resident Robyn Bain said this month's flooding was around the seventh on her property near the Riwaka River.

Most had happened in the last 12 years - including during the heavy rain events last winter.

Bain didn’t make an insurance claim on her home of 24 years then, or since, for fear her insurers would withdraw insurance.

The floodwater swept around her home from the direction of the river, across a council reserve and through her sheds.

An orchard at Peach Island on the West Bank of the Motueka River near Riwaka a year ago.

When it rained, she watched the park “on the hour”, she said. “You're up all night. You don't sleep because you're worried that it's going to flood.“

Bain said the council had promised to put a bund behind her and her neighbours' houses.

'I've been waiting for 12 years.'

She wanted the council to fix stop banks and remove gravel from the river.

Tasman District Council river and natural hazards manager, David Arseneau, said central government funding for regional economic development had enabled the council to make “worthwhile improvements” on the stopbank network, focusing on the Lower Motueka, Peach Island and Brooklyn areas of waterway.

But, with river works funding coming from council Long Term Plan budgets, providing the same level of river works and stopbank protection across all 285km of council-maintained rivers would be “extremely challenging to deliver, and very likely unaffordable for ratepayers”.

Davis lived in an “extremely dynamic” stretch of the Upper Motueka River which was Y-rated, Arseneau said.

That meant the council provided riverbank erosion control and work to keep the river corridor stable, rather than measures like stopbanks to prevent flood waters from entering private property, he said.

To ensure people’s safety, the council had been encouraging communities to develop emergency action plans, he said.

“We have also made some recent investment in flood warning systems and technology across the district to provide sufficient notice should high river flows be expected during a severe weather event.”

The council was also reviewing its river rating system.