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SH35 has opened to a single lane between Ōpōtiki and Te Araroa in the Eastern Bay of Plenty after leaving travellers stranded overnight as a large landslide and fallen trees blocked the state highway, leaving locals worried about their safety from forestry slash.
Transport agency Waka Kotahi began working on the closed road on Monday morning between Beach Rdthe Motu River Bridge, Maraenui, allowing geotechnical assessments to be completed and as of Monday evening contractors had clear enough debris to open one lane.
Roger Brady, Waka Kotahi Bay of Plenty transport systems manager, said contractors had worked urgently through out the day to clear enough material and “allow the road to safely re-open to a single lane (while) work continues to clear the remainder of the slip”.
“Our contractors have done a great job to get a lane open so quickly. There is still a lot of work to do, and we’re asking people to drive safely through the site and comply with the temporary speed restrictions which are in place to keep drivers and workers safe.”
Geotechnical engineers will continue monitoring the site closely “to manage any risks of further debris coming down onto the road,” Brady said.
“We know how important this connection is for residents and businesses in the area, and we’re doing everything possible to stabilise the site and keep the road open, but the safety of road users and roadworkers is our top priority and we won’t hesitate to close the road again if needed.”
Geotechnical engineers had been on site since early Monday morning assessing the safety of the area.
Supplied
Parish priest Father Fernando Ladio Alombro missed the slip on SH35 by just minutes on Sunday.
Parish priest Father Fernando Ladio Alombro missed the slip by just minutes and had to cancel his scheduled mass, and stay overnight in a house of one of the parishioners.
”Heaps of large logs fell in a landslide or logslide, and were covering the road. I had to turn back to Ōpōtiki. I was stranded overnight.”
A local marae at Otuwhare was opened to house any stranded drivers.
Manu Caddie also missed the slip by just minutes.
“We were all very lucky. I think it was the collapse of a skid site where logs are piled up. The slopes are very steep around there.”
Locals had been concerned about the potential for slips in the area given the hills on the side of the road coupled with extreme weather this year, Caddie said.
“Crazy that the companies are allowed to plant, let alone harvest, pines on such steep slopes. Pines are shallow rooting, unsuitable for erosion-prone land.”
Also known as wood slash, forestry slash is the scrap timber, branches and offcuts left behind in when pine plantations are harvested.
Manu Caddie/Stuff
The slopes where the slip happened, taken earlier in 2023, show the local forestry slash.
Photographs of the hills on the roadside that Caddie took a few months earlier show the slash that has now fallen to the road.
“Inevitably it has made its way down as gravity, rain, thin soils and steep slopes do what they do.”
Similar pine plantations on erosion prone land caused significant slips and slash in Tairāwhiti, he said.
“We have to start transitioning to permanent indigenous forest – now.”
When Caddie shared a video of the slip to his page about State Highway 35, hundreds of locals were appalled, and worried about the danger of more slash, one saying,
“Further “Russian Roulette” with our lives every time we drive SHW 35 in the rain.”
The impact of forestry slash made headlines after Cyclone Gabrielle.
The National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry (NES-PF) came into effect in May 2018 and set out where and how slash should be stacked to reduce the risk of it ending up in a waterway.
After Cyclone Gabrielle, forestry industry representatives have said practices had changed since 2018 and outcomes would continue to improve.
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