New Zealand insurers are getting nasty over cover for the South Island lakeside resort town of Queenstown. The Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) is supporting insurers’ reluctance to cover the town’s lakeside businesses, because nothing has been done to mitigate the town’s very real flood threat.

Just four years after the local tourist jetboats were cruising up the town’s main street, ICNZ says nothing has been done to reduce the risk of future flooding.

That’s why many Queenstown businesses haven’t been able to get insurance since the devastating 1999 floods, says ICNZ CEO Chris Ryan. Insurers are “reluctant” to cover such a substantial risk. Not that the locals haven’t tried to do something. But their flood mitigation plans have been rejected by the Otago Regional Council.