Every named river, stream, drain and canal the open map records
inside the city, 131 of them,
609km of drawn course. Each is a record: where it
runs, the suburbs it crosses, the register along its banks.
Named waterways
131
Mapped course
609 km
The longest
Waimakariri River
What the record says
Waimakariri River alone draws 161km, 26% of every named course in the city.
Only 9 of the 131 get called rivers, the other 122 are streams, drains and canals, 15 of them the dug and straightened kind the map names anyway.
7 carry a live council gauge, the readings stay on /rivers.
The city’s water, drawn
Centrelines from OpenStreetMap, the nine rivers
carry the strong line, the streams, drains and canals stay faint.
Live levels are instruments, kept on /rivers.
Where the water rises
The council maps 325 springs,
pins from its watercourse register and the river-environment survey,
none of them named. Each files under the suburb its pin sits
inside.
131 on the open map, rivers, streams, drains and canals together carrying 609km of mapped course.
Where does the waterway map come from?
OpenStreetMap, every named way tagged river, stream, drain or canal inside the city boundary, merged by name. The line is the centre of the water as mapped, not a surveyed course.
Are the gauges on this page?
No, the live levels are instruments, kept on /rivers. This roll is the waterways themselves, as records.
The record behind this
Named ways tagged river, stream, drain or canal on OpenStreetMap,
inside the Christchurch City boundary, merged by name (ODbL). The
drawn course is a map lead, not a surveyed channel, and not a flood
map.