Questions posed during ecology design walkover

While RiverLink is designed to protect the lives and livelihoods of people in Lower Hutt, the river’s world of fish, bugs and plants matters too.

The project has to resolve these potentially competing interests, and that’s why the design team and ecology experts recently spent a morning inspecting the RiverLink project. The question they posed was: how can flood protection and the environment work hand in hand to enhance the ecology of the river and floodplain?

It’s a great question, because the scale of the construction work being talked about could have significant impact on the river and if it isn’t managed right could damage the rivers environment. While there is legislation to protect against or minimise this damage, we want to do better than just rely on this process. For that reason we are making ecological values of the river an important part of our design discussions, sitting alongside recreation, culture, and heritage, transport, and flood security.