For decades, we’ve tried to fight against nature – draining swamps, building on floodplains and constructing walls to keep water at bay.
But the climate is changing. Our defences are failing. And in some cases, they’re making things worse.
In Hawke’s Bay, the folly of the fight is obvious. The proof is everywhere you look.
We visited the area for Sunday last month just after Cyclone Gabrielle. Low-lying homes were inundated with water. People drowned in their ceilings as the floodwaters rose. Farms, homes, vineyards and orchards are still buried today in blankets of silt.
Tim Gregory-Hunt’s horse stud in Waiohiki is among them.
“I don’t know – what the hell do we do here?”, he asks. “We don’t know where to start.”
His neighbour Karen Busch has lost everything. The floodwaters rose above her ceiling – and long after Gabrielle passed over, she still has to wade through polluted water and mud to reach her front door.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she says, marooned on her doorstep. “This was my dream home”.
We see these events as natural disasters. But much of the fault could lie with us.
“I believe this area was a manmade disaster,” says geotechnical consultant Nick Rogers.
He’s one of the country’s foremost experts, having worked on every natural disaster in New Zealand for the past 45 years.
“When we try and defend against nature, I think we run into a false sense of security often that we are protected.”
Instead our defences may have done more harm.
“They basically give you a false sense of protection that somehow you're okay for these bigger floods,” he says.
The evidence lies in Hawke’s Bay, between two rivers, the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro.
They’re protected by 250km of stopbanks, designed to keep the rivers from spilling out onto land.
In Cyclone Gabrielle, the defences failed. Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has revealed to Sunday the Tutaekuri breached its banks in 14 places – the Ngaruroro a further 8.
Two people died by the banks of those rivers. When the water got in, it had no way out.
“The things with stop banks is with small scale flooding, they work just fine. But when you get a lot of debris coming down, that actually makes the disaster bigger,” says Rogers.
“It makes it a lot worse, because… people have no easy way to escape.”
It’s what happened to New Orleans in 2005 in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. 1392 people were killed when flood protections failed. The city filled up like a swimming pool.
“Once water gets in, your flood defences fail,” says Rogers. “You then get the potential for drownings.”
Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is rebuilding its stopbanks. Rogers fears history could repeat.
“Ultimately, they just provide bigger disasters further down the track,” he says. “We need to start living with nature, instead of thinking we can defend against nature in perpetuity.”
A much bigger disaster
It could spell a warning for Westport – where stopbanks are planned to surround the whole town.
It sits at the mouth of the Buller River, home to the country’s most powerful flows.
“Buller is very much the canary in the coal mine for climate change,” says Buller District mayor Jamie Cleine.
Much of the town is built on a flood plain. When Westport flooded in 2021, a quarter of homes were red or yellow-stickered – deemed too unsafe to live inside.
They don’t fear another flood there. They know it’s coming.
“There’s a huge level of anxiety. And there’s certain people who lay awake at night every time it’s raining,” says Cleine.
Jane Duncan is one of those Westport residents. Her young family has lived through it twice. Their home was destroyed by two major floods – in 2018 and 2021.
“We don’t have any other houses and we can’t afford to go and buy one,” she says.
“We’re sitting ducks really and praying, hoping, that it doesn't happen again.”
The West Coast Regional Council and Buller District Council have submitted a joint plan to the Government to build a huge stopbank around most of the town.
Rogers warns it could be catastrophic.
“We have to be very, very careful that we're not just creating a much bigger disaster in future,” he says. “And that is my fear.”
Like in Hawke’s Bay – and New Orleans – the stopbanks risk causing greater danger by trapping floodwaters in when they’re breached.
“It's potentially very dangerous, because in fact, the stopbanks… are proposed to be two to three meters high in places. That's higher than a roof,” says Rogers.
So what other choice does Westport have?
“I believe the answer is to retreat,” he says.
Can we afford not to? The answer is no
In the wake of back-to-back storms this year, two words are getting louder: “managed retreat”.
It’s the idea some places are so unsafe, homes and residents need to be moved.
Sunday can reveal Westport tried to do so after the floods in 2021, but the Government didn’t act.
Buller’s mayor was part of the effort.
“That was taken to Government at the time and they certainly understood that plight,” says Cleine.
The plan was to move 202 homes found to be in serious danger of flooding. It would cost $83 million, but insurance would cover $23 million – leaving the Government to foot the rest.
“It's never cheaper to retreat from an area that immediately after a natural disaster occurs,” says Rogers.
“This was put to Government. Nothing happened. So the result was that those houses were put back in the same position they were, at the same level they were in, in the same flood risk they were at beforehand. And that just seemed crazy”
Jane Duncan’s home was among them. Within 18 months, it was rebuilt in the very same spot.
“I look around now and I think, ‘Gosh that really needs to be done. We should replant there. The house desperately needs to be painted.’ But do we bother? Do we bother putting money back into this? Or should I be saving every last penny because I might have nowhere to go?”
It isn’t just an issue for the people of Westport. IAG – the country’s biggest insurer – estimates 20,000 homes are in need of managed retreat. Rogers says entire communities may soon need to be moved.
“It is going to be expensive, but that is not the question. The question is can we afford not to do it? And the answer to that is no,” he says.
With climate change already upon us, the issue is only getting more urgent. 2021 was New Zealand’s hottest year on record. 2022 was hotter than that.
There are big decisions looming for our country’s future. Are we ready for what’s to come?
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