October 2025 Weather Event Support

Murihiku Southland’s recent weather event has had a devastating and wide-reaching impact on communities across our region. Power and communication outages and damage to infrastructure has put a severe strain on families and farming operations.

Adding to that pressure, is the adverse weather and damage coming at a particularly busy time on farm. Environment Southland is here to support farmers as they face a raft of challenges in the aftermath of this weather event.

Please reach out to our team if you are needing any assistance or advice on land sustainability, and compliance matters, or anything in the environmental space. Give us a call on 0800 76 88 45.

Below we’ve compiled advice to help farmers navigate the many challenges at this time, check them out.

Dairy

If you need to dump milk, please use your effluent pond and let our compliance team know so we can follow up later.

We know it’s not an easy situation but using your effluent pond is the safest option and helps protect our waterways.
If you have a near full or full pond and need to irrigate wet soils, please give us a call first.

If irrigation is necessary, choose paddocks carefully to avoid runoff into tile drains or discharges to waterways.
Please reach out to your local contractor if you can’t irrigate due to power outages.

Our regular dairy compliance monitoring programme has been paused.
We will review weekly and decide when to restart, depending on the recovery time.
During this time, our staff will be focused on advice and support.

If you have questions about milk or effluent pond management or any dairy farming or dairy consent related matters, our teams are here to help. Call us 24/7 on 0800 76 88 45.

Land and soil management

For information on drainage management, forestry management and other land management click here

Environment Southland is following up with forestry companies to ensure they get in touch with us if they are salvaging trees.

Some species of fallen trees can be toxic to stock. Care should be taken to minimise any browsing of Macrocarpa, Cupressus and Cyprus varieties, Cryptomeria japonica and aesthetic trees like oaks with acorns and some garden species like Oleander and Rhododendron.

Flood banks & waterways

Murihiku Southland’s flood banks which protect people, property and vital infrastructure suffered damage across many parts of our region last Thursday.

Our catchment operations team has been undertaking extensive flood bank inspections and organising and prioritising repair work.

If you see damage to flood banks near your property, please report it to us.
Our team can then assess what repair work needs to be done and so it can be scheduled.

It is particularly important to have our flood bank network repaired, especially given some of the region’s rivers have been in High River Watch status recently.

Broken trees and other vegetation or times in waterways also have the potential to cause flooding issues.
Please report them to us, too. Give us a call 0800 76 88 45.

Rainfall & river levels

Our hydrology team are closely monitoring river levels during the current period of adverse weather.

The monitoring we undertake all year round provides readily available information for Southlanders on how changes in water levels could affect their property or their livestock – click here for rainfall/river levels information.

To see real-time camera images of monitoring sites click here .

For information on groundwater, bores, wells and stock water click here .

For everything from property searches to water meter readings click here.

Outdoor burning