Focus on river management

Horizons Regional Council is highlighting their role in river management for the months of June and July.

Ramon Strong, Horizons group manager river management, says publicity will be run predominately through the Council’s social media accounts and aims to provide an insight into what his team actually does.
 
“As the regional council we’re responsible for managing the Region’s rivers to help prevent flooding and erosion,” says Mr Strong.
 
“However, a lot of people don’t realise the breadth of our work beyond keeping our communities safe through stopbanks and responding to flood events. While these two factors are certainly important to our role, there is so much more that we do such as erosion control, land drainage, engineering design and asset management.”
 
As Horizons’ river management team manages 34 river and drainage schemes, the publicity will include 34 days of posts ranging from historical floods to what schemes look like in each district.
 
“We will also be running a few competitions over the period. The first one begins this week with a photo of a historical flood that we’re asking people to guess which part of the Region it comes from.
 
“Take a look at the photo on our website or social channels and enter your guess online or by emailing communications@horizons.govt.nz. All entries go in the draw for you and a friend to join one of our engineers on a helicopter flight over your local river scheme.”
 
Mr Strong says the photo will also be on the front cover of the Council’s quarterly mailout Across the Region. Entries close Friday 21 July 2017 and all competition details can be found on the flood protection page of Horizons’ website.  
 
Horizons social media accounts are:

• Facebook: @HorizonsRegionalCouncil
• Instagram: @HorizonsRegionalCouncil
• Twitter: @HorizonsRC 

Horizons river and drainage schemes include over 490km of stopbanks, 1,090km of drains, 23 pumping stations and 53 dams. They cover approximately 40 per cent of the river catchment areas in the Region and are funded by ratepayers who benefit from scheme infrastructure or maintenance activities.