By Lachlan Forsyth
Floodwaters are receding in the Bay of Plenty, after days of torrential rain.
But while the immediate risk has diminished, the locals say urgent work needs to be done to make sure they won't be isolated again, because major roads are blocked by floods and slips.
While the flooding danger has eased, parts of the Bay of Plenty remain well and truly inundated.
For the last few days low-lying areas around Opotiki have been swamped - at times leaving farms and settlements in the area completely cut off.
“A lot of the roads had slips and that, washed out or come down and covered the road, so we usually have a few problems,” says farmer Dean Petersen.
The Mayor says the most recent rains shows how urgently the regions roads need attention.
“I think we need to have at least one secure route where we can go somewhere either to Gisborne or Whakatakne, [In] Tauranga and Rotorua there were three of them cut off over the weekend - four of them actually,” says Opotiki Mayor John Forbes.
Farmers still have plenty to do.
“It's just a matter of waiting for the river to go down and then getting the water out,” says farmer Dean Petersen.
In Whakatane, officials were relieved.
“We got through last night quite nicely, the peak of the flood had happened 12 hours earlier so the levels weren't as high, the river mouth had scoured as well so we were getting much more flows out into the sea,” says Roger Waugh, Whakatane Regional Council flood manager.
Contractors working on a breached stop-bank west of the town used railway line and rocks to stem the flow before they successfully plugged the gap.
But a dozen homes needed to be evacuated
With no reports of serious damage in the region, locals and officials are relieved to have escaped as lightly as they did.
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