'Sobering” is Whakatane District councillor Nandor Tanczos' description of the devastation wrought by the flooding that struck the Eastern Bay of Plenty recently.

On Wednesday, Nandor was part of a group made up of representatives from the Whakatane District and Bay of Plenty Regional councils who spent the day travelling to locations in Galatea, Murupara and Ruatahuna to view the repairs carried out since the flooding in April.

The group was made up of Whakatane District councillors Judy Turner, Alison Silcock, Andrew Iles and transportation manager Martin Taylor, pluss BOPRC councillor Bill Clarke and Eastern catchments m anagerSimon Stokes.

'We met with some of the farmers around Galatea whose farms are still inundated. Resilient people. They had some valid concerns about the lack of action to deal with the impact of the dam on the hydrology of the area, going back decades,” says Nandor in a post to Facebook.

'As is so often the case it seems, the legacy of poor decisions in the past has left us with expensive and difficult problems to solve today.”

But Nandor says it's good to see the BOPRC, which has responsibility for waterways, being prepared to work with the WDC, which is responsible for roads, to address the flooding issues and come to a long-term solution for the area.

The group then travelled to Murupara to view at some other council work that's taking place there, as well as a drive by his uncle's home at Murphy's corner where a spring has burst out of the ground and flooded his house.

'Most people have forgotten about it by now but lots of people are still living with the impacts of the flooding, including the water that is still affecting them.”

The group then took a look at the state of the repairs to the road to Ruatahuna, and Nandor says contractors have been 'working their asses off” to get the road open. It is hoped the road will be open to local traffic in a couple of weeks, and to the general public a couple of weeks later.

'They are having to rebuild the road from scratch in a number of places - by which I mean starting from a hole.”

'Great to hear that many locals have been employed on the repairs - lots of Ngati Whare and Tuhoe have answered the call out and are involved in the work - not just working the stop signs but skilled workers driving those enormous vehicles, diggers etc.

'It was sobering to see just how devastating the floods were up there. Full respect to Ruatahuna, who have been cut off and held it together so well.”