National recognition for Martinborough Community Board

By Councillor Aidan Ellims

While last week’s Local Government NZ conference was in the headlines with topics around

infrastructure and spending, the event which was held on Thursday evening unfortunately received no coverage. This was the LGNZ Community Board Awards and Martinborough Community Board, and specifically Community Board member Angela Brown, received the “Partnering with Councils Award” for which a number of other community boards from across NZ competed.

This award was for the work Angela and MCB have carried out during the past year to build emergency resiliency throughout the Martinborough community and promote the Martinborough Community Emergency Hub.

Angela and MCB have successfully engaged with council, Wellington Regional Emergency

Management Office and the community on this project. It has been so successful in Martinborough that the process is going to be rolled out into Greytown and Featherston later this year. 

Congrats to Angela and the MCB team for your work on this project and being recognised nationally with this award.

On another resilience topic, on Saturday 10 August, Angela and I attended the Tora Fire Station at Tuturumuri where staff from WREMO spoke to rural residents about the risks and issues from earthquakes and tsunami’s in the Te Awaiti/Tora and White Rock areas. A lot of information was shared between residents and WREMO staff, particularly around communicating with the Emergency Management Centre when a Civil Defence emergency is declared and roads/normal lines of communication have failed.

WREMO staff also spoke about an Emergency Resource Container which will be supplied to the Tora/Tuturumuri community in the near future. This is equipped with a limited amount of emergency equipment and the community will be responsible for stocking it with whatever other equipment/food they feel will be needed.

These Emergency Resource Containers have been created since Cyclone Gabrielle and are funded by central government for rural communities which could become isolated during natural disaster events. I understand that Ngawi and Lake Ferry will also be receiving an Emergency Resource Container.

This last month, access into Martinborough along SH53 was closed with the Ruamahunga flooding and the Waihenga Bridge closing for the first time in 2024. From memory, I think that in 2023 it did not close, while the bridge closed on four occasions in 2022.

We know that the bridge was built in 1912, so is now 112 years old. It is 5.5 metres wide and does not meet the current safety standards for bridges on State Highways in relation to width, approaches, side protection barriers and limitations during flood events. There was a plan for the bridge to be replaced between 2021 and 2026, however, priorities have changed and the life of the bridge has now been extended out to 2036.

MCB and the Business Association have drafted a survey to be sent to local businesses to record  the impact the closure of the Waihenga Bridge/SH53 has on businesses and residents here in Martinborough. This information will be used in the future to help draft a business case for replacement of the bridge.

Now that we have had our first bridge closure in 2024, we will work on getting this survey out to businesses in our community and start to gather this information.

In July, the Greater Wellington Regional Transport Committee met to discuss transport priorities across the Wellington area. Sadly there are only two projects listed in the Wairarapa _ Waihenga Bridge replacement is not one of them. Apparently on NZTA’s priority list of bridges across NZ that need to be replaced, Waihenga Bridge does not feature in the top 30!!

Over the next couple of years, I would like to see the MCB work with our community gathering information to present to Council and NZTA so that the priority for replacement of the Waihenga Bridge increases. I would certainly like to see a replacement bridge constructed before 2036.

If you wish to contact me, please email to: aidan.ellims@swdc.govt.nz