Source: Radio New Zealand
Clarkville residents protesting at Baynons Road. RNZ/Anna Sargent
Canterbury’s Waimakariri District Council will examine alternative routes for trucks taking gravel from the Waimakariri River, after Clarkville locals expressed concern about someone being hurt or killed.
Residents told RNZ gravel trucks had been pounding their narrow roads since the end of last year while 90,000 cubic metres of gravel was extracted in preparation for the new $1 billion Woodend Bypass motorway.
About 20 people blockaded a Clarkville road on Monday morning to protest against the trucks, saying rocks had fallen off and smashed windscreens and dented cars.
Locals were also worried about other applications on hold with the regional council to extract a further 900,000 cubic metres from the river.
At a meeting on Tuesday, the district council agreed to create a reference group that would include residents, the regional council, Transport Agency and contractors to investigate whether there were better options for gravel haulage in future.
The Woodend Bypass extraction project, which was set to run until September, would carry on as planned.
Over summer contractors took 10,000 cubic metres of gravel from the river, with a further 80,000 left to extract.
Baynons Road resident Sarah Manning said that would mean more than 200 truck movements per day in the area.
“This is a truck and trailer every three minutes, all day 7am to 5pm, past our homes, through the horse park through Silverstream Reserve. Our lived experience of the trucks both pre- and post-Christmas was frankly hell. The trucks were incessant, we’re determined not to experience that again,” she said.
Local Leonie Ward said people were worried about someone being seriously hurt or killed after some close calls.
“My partner in fact had a rock come through his windscreen. It was about the size of one-and-a-half golf balls and what happens was the rock fell off the truck and bounced off the truck and hit his windscreen. He said if he had been on a bike or walking that would’ve killed him,” she said.
The reference group aimed to report back to the council by September on gravel haulage options.
District council senior engineering advisor Don Young said any new plan might not be able to be implemented until the 2027/28 financial year.
Resident Juliet Edwards said that meant more years of grief for people in Clarkville.
“We’re really disappointed that works aren’t stopping, especially when we know they’re going to go on for such a long time. We do believe the council can stop it, we do believe we’re in a rural lifestyle zone and they are wanting industrial traffic on our rural lifestyle roads which is actually illegal,” she said.
Edwards hoped all further gravel extraction consents could be paused until a solution was found, otherwise protests would continue.
“We have heard the trucks will be in full force tomorrow so we will be there,” she said.
Waimakariri mayor Dan Gordon said he understood that Woodend Bypass work had taken a toll on residents and the council was working hard on their behalf.
Mitigation measures had been introduced including a maximum speed of 40km/h for all trucks, operations limited to weekdays, watering of unsealed roads to control dust and trucks avoiding Haywards Road past the school, he said.
“I want us to be looking at the broader solution. There is a significant volume of aggregate in the Waimakariri River that needs to be moved in addition the 80,000 cubic metres, potentially up to a million cubic metres, so it makes sense to ask whether there is a more permanent and sustainable approach. As far as I’m concerned, everything is on the table,” he said.
“An early task for the reference group will be to clearly understand what the real constraints are, if any, and to be mindful of those as we explore options. It’s also very important to me that residents are represented in that conversation.”
Gordon said the Woodend Bypass was a critical project for the district and one the council had been advocating for over many years.
“We strongly support that project, and at the same time, the removal of this gravel also plays an important role in flood mitigation. Both of those outcomes matter and we need to consider how we achieve them in the best possible way.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand