Agreement reached on Shotover slip

A meeting of all stakeholders facilitated today by the Queenstown Lakes District Council reached agreement on a course of action over the Shotover River slip.

The slip, which has been closely monitored for a week, has seen the closure of public access in the immediate slip zone and a temporary voluntary cessation of commercial rafting on the Shotover River.

Stakeholders including QLDC, Otago Regional Council, land owner John Foster, commercial operators and geotechnical engineers were briefed on the current status of the slip.

The meeting was in general agreement with geotechnical advice that of the original 30,000 cubic metre slip only 5 to 10,000 cubic metres had fallen away in the last ten days, leaving an unstable potential mass of approximately 20,000 cubic metres. “Failure of the slip was considered imminent but no accurate timeframe is possible,” QLDC chief executive Duncan Field said.

Consideration was given in the meeting to options which included allowing the slip to fall naturally, blasting the slip or use water pressure to bring forward the timing of the slip.

The meeting agreed the following:

* Continue to visually monitor the slip. No further geo-technical work needs to be done until the slip has fallen.
* Allow the slip to continue to fall naturally on the basis that failure of the slip is considered imminent.
* Recognise that the slip risk must be mitigated to the satisfaction of the commercial operators and the council before commercial rafting can resume.
* The commercial operators are considering further intervention, the first of which may be the use of water to bring forward the collapse of the slip.

“It is acknowledged that rafting is an important and iconic industry to Queenstown and that we would all like to see commercial rafting resume on the Shotover River as soon as possible. The operators and the council are in total agreement, that can only occur once the risk has been mitigated,” Mr Field said.

A schist slip was not an exact science.

“Only part of it may fall or we may find in a week’s time it has yet to fail. The door is still open to explore intervention and the commercial operators have assumed responsibility should that path be necessary,” Mr Field said.

Meanwhile commercial operators Shotover Jet and Shotover Canyon Swing are not affected by the slip and commercial rafting is continuing on the Kawarau River.