Spring Grove resident Rose Renton would rather be gardening, but instead she has found herself leading a campaign against Tasman District Council’s river management policies.
By Max Frethey for Local Democracy Reporting
“It’s a massive regional issue,” she said.
Her home was flooded in both the June and July 2025 floods. She lost a cat, two vehicles, and everything else in her house that was kept below hip height, and now suffers from rain anxiety.
Following the floods, she launched her "Get Real on Rivers" petition that urged the council to undertake more proactive river management practices to better protect the community.
Renton wanted to see more gravel extraction, better-maintained stopbanks and culverts, speedier responses to recovery and upgrade works, prioritisation of local knowledge, and greater clarity about how residents can conduct their own river management works.
“All rivers and catchments need maintenance, and the system that they’re currently working with isn’t working… If work isn’t done, our properties and, sadly, lives will be lost.”
She briefly stepped back from her advocacy due to the stress of it and her own flood recovery, but she recommitted herself following the smaller-scale flooding during this year’s King’s Birthday weekend.
“I didn’t flood, but what it did trigger is ‘I’m still unsafe. I could be back at square one. My property value will erode, and the walls are coming in.’”
'We want some results'
Renton has put on several community meetings for concerned residents, such as in Wakefield and Tapawera, with later ones planned for Riwaka and Upper Moutere.
“It’s quite overwhelming. The emotion in the room… was significant and moving.”
She said that she has spoken with hundreds of residents and expected to eventually connect with thousands. Her Change.org petition now has more than 1,170 verified signatures.
Renton presented to the council last Thursday, claiming that the organisation’s river management decisions were callous, negligent, and “grossly inadequate”.
“Your policies are harming our communities,” she told elected members.
Once her river meetings were completed, Renton intended to form an incorporated society to legally challenge the council’s practices if it did not start making improvements.
“We want some results. We’re sick of empty promises, and we’re sick of being ignored.”
No simple solutions – mayor
Mayor Tim King said the council could mitigate flood events but it was an “unavoidable fact” that some people would be impacted.
“As much as I’d love to give people assurance that we can solve all these issues and that there’s simple solutions, there aren’t.”
He said the council’s role was largely to provide information about what people could do on their properties without a consent, and guidance on consent processes – something he acknowledged the organisation could do better – and to manage future flood risk.
However, the council only managed “a pretty small percentage” of Tasman’s many waterways, and it was the unmanaged ones that had seen much of the damage in last winter’s floods and over King’s Birthday weekend.
It was important people understood the risks when buying property, but King added that there was little the council could do for those who currently occupied flood-prone properties.
“A limited amount anyone can do, really.”
The district's river management was a constant point of tension, with some urging greater action and intervention while others were concerned about the extent of its river works, he said.
River rating review
Tasman’s decades-old rating system, which funds river management works, was now being reviewed, with the council examining local rivers and catchments, comparing their size, activity, population, land use, economic activity, and infrastructure, before using that information to consider what the council could feasibly do and afford.
The community will have extensive input, but King warned that ratepayers could not fund management of all waterways.
“The current system isn’t perfect, but to come up with a better system is certainly not straightforward,” he said.
“Whenever you review rating systems… there tends to be winners and losers.”
David Arseneau, the council’s rivers and natural hazards manager, said the 2025 floods were “generation-defining” and had shocked the system.
“The scale was unprecedented for us… In some of these areas, there is no going back to the way that it was before.”
River works complicated, but progressing
After the 2025 floods, the council had realigned entire rivers after they shifted, built rock walls, planted willows, and repaired stopbanks, but King’s Birthday weekend set the recovery programme back with “a couple million dollars” in new damage.
He reluctantly described council’s current river management framework as “complicated”.
“It feels so trite… because there are uncomplicated parts of it, but it’s the system as a whole that is complicated.”
River works could have implications both up and downstream, so it was important that projects were done right, but that meant it often took longer to begin than people expected.
“There needs to be a process and some checks and balances… but I certainly believe it could be easier and simpler.”
He added that the council’s approach to gravel extraction was not “ideological” and that more had been extracted this year than the year prior, but said council was required to maintain certain riverbed levels and that extraction could be limited when there was no commercial interest.
“Where I can [extract gravel], I will, as much as possible.”
Arseneau said that the council was constantly balancing flood response and proactive protection and, despite the recent devastation, the floods provided an opportunity to rethink what river corridors should look like to prevent future floods.
“We’re all wanting to go in the same direction. It doesn’t always feel like it, but I genuinely want the best for the people that live along the rivers.”
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
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