Flood Mitigation
Tātau Tātau o Te Wairoa (TToTW) have remained committed to working with our Tripartite Partners, Wairoa District Council (WDC) and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC), in supporting the development of a safe and resilient Wairoa community in the face of future weather events.
In January 2026, TToTW provided their response to HBRC’s application for resource consent for the Flood Mitigation Project. TToTW has always acknowledged that some of our beneficiary whānau and hapū have supported the proposed flood mitigation works, and some have opposed the solution. The project will impact the ability or way in which whānau and hapū interact with their whenua and wai, and TToTW acknowledges the commitment whānau and hapū have taken in consideration of the cultural, social, economic and environmental impacts of the works. Considering this, TToTW’s assessment of the resource consent application was centred on ‘mauri’ and the ‘belonging’ of the project’s design on our ecological and cultural landscapes, given the social and economic values.
TToTW prepared a ‘Cultural Layer’ of existing literature that encompassed the area from the project site to the river mouth, to enrich the cultural considerations of the project in understanding environmental relationships and, providing an ethical lense that positively supports traditional practices. In connecting this Cultural Layer to the Wairoa Flood Mitigation Works, TToTW engaged Kēpa Morgan to apply his Mauri-0-Meter across the project build documents, against the information within the Cultural Layer. The Mauri-0-Meter has been utilised in Aotearoa and the wider Pacific as a decision-making tool in engineering projects.
Climate change, frequency of severe weather events and predicted sea level rise, mean theWairoa community needs a comprehensive and enduring approach to flood protection. This should go beyond a design driven by North Clyde’s localised flood risk and instead consider catchment-wide vulnerabilities including river mouth management, chronic sediment loading from eroding landscapes, and degraded riparian margins. A holistic, multi-layered approach to understand the impacts of natural processes across all atua domains and the cultural values they support, ki uta ki tai, is essential.
TToTW’s approach, grounded in the concept of mauri, offered not only a different way to assess the project, but fundamentally a different way to define value in measuring how well the infrastructure fits within our cultural and ecological landscapes.
TToTW formed the position that the proposed Wairoa Flood Mitigation Solution of Option 1C+, which is designed mainly as a hydrological intervention, of hard-engineered flood defence, presents as an imposed structure. It conflicts with cultural and ecological values and does not show a reciprocal relationship with the whenua and wai, thereby having the potential to degrade mauri.
In our response, TToTW provided a concept design that could enhance mauri within theconstruction planning, contributing to whānau, hapū, community, and ecosystem wellbeing. By complementing the hard-engineering option with nature-based solutions, enhances the environment’s own flood response processes. Incorporating ‘mauri-positive’ mechanisms ‘softens’ the engineering structure, integrating flood protection with cultural connection and ecological enrichment. TToTW have had a positive response to some aspects of the concept design, with HBRC Project Management indicating support for TToTW, informed by mana whenua, to further explore some mauri-enhancing design options with the project’s Ecologist team.