Working with Waikato Civil Defence and Emergency Management, replacing flood infrastructure and incident/pollution response were some of the essential services delivered by Waikato Regional Council this week.

The regional council has nine essential services it’s responsible for, and they are:

• natural hazard event monitoring, response and recovery (including 24/7 flood monitoring programme)
• flood and drought management, flood protection and land drainage
• incident/pollution response including related enforcement
• compliance monitoring programmes for high risk activities as they relate to human health
• environmental monitoring, including sampling and analysing water quality for safe human activities
• ensuring maritime navigational safety
• public transport (for essential travel only)
• civil defence and emergency management
• biosecurity incursion response and eradication.

Chief executive Vaughan Payne says teams from across the council, including in IT, spatial information, communications and digital, customer service, human resources, finance, property and facilities, are all supporting these essential services.

“One of our biggest jobs at the moment is our work with civil defence,” says Mr Payne.

“We have 18 staff who work permanently for Waikato CDEM and a further 27 staff who are currently on CDEM’s roster or who are authorised to step up if they need to.”

Elsewhere, the council’s incident response team has been out every day this week to check out environmental concerns called into council.

“We’re getting fewer calls, which is to be expected because people aren’t out and about as they would have been.”

Flood protection and land drainage assets continue to be inspected, checked and maintained to ensure they meet the level of service promised to keep communities safe, and asset renewal projects are being completed.

“We refitted a pump at Freshfield Pump Station this week between Hamilton and Gordonton.

“There’s also unplanned work which we continue to respond to – our staff are on call to respond to electrical and mechanical faults, outages and breakdowns, that sort of thing.”

Mr Payne says all callout and operational staff have their own vehicle at home and practice physical distancing when working with others.

“All our buildings are effectively in shutdown and everyone is working from home at all times apart from staff who need to deliver an essential public service which cannot be done remotely. Then there are strict processes which they have to follow.”

The key principles for determining whether a service is essential are:

• minimising risks to public health.
• continuing and supporting the response to COVID-19
• ensuring the necessities of life
• maintaining public health, safety and security.

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