The West Coast Regional Council has approved $100,000 to address flooding risk at Paroa, Greymouth.

The budget — bumped up from $15,000 —  is for improvements to the combined mouth of Saltwater Creek and New River.

The increase was hotly contested at a Greymouth Rating District Joint Committee meeting in June, where councillors suggested they should first gather more information.

Paroa experienced severe flooding in 1978, 2010 and 2024 after the sea blocked the estuary fed by both the creek and river.

Regional council area engineer Paulette Birchfield said the original budget for the project was insufficient due to its complexity.

“The original budget was a bit low taking into account the complexity of the system when you have got New River. New River goes all the way back to the headwaters in Aratika, and there are a lot of smaller waterways feeding into it … it is quite a long list and quite complex.”

Cr Andy Campbell challenged whether the flooding at Paroa was definitely at its worst when the river mouth was blocked.

Ms Birchfield said that was what they wanted to investigate further.

“The model is going to have one set river mouth. We are hoping to be able to have multiple models with the different mouth configurations to show what might be the best one.

“There are a lot of questions to be answered in this one and that is one of the reasons it is quite an expensive job.”

Chief executive Darryl Lew said keeping the river mouth open was the most important problem to solve, but there are also concerns around runoff from new subdivisions in Paroa and channel maintenance in Saltwater Creek.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ on Air