The West Coast Regional Council (WCRC) will seek to legalise a rock wall it threw up in haste to protect Hokitika properties from the sea.
By Lois Williams, Local Democracy Reporter
The move follows an abatement notice served on the WCRC by the Westland District Council in August, requiring the regional council to either remove the rock or get resource consent for it by February 27 next year.
The Regional Council built the barrier as a rush job in 2019 to save Sunset Point from being cut off by fast-moving beach erosion.
No resource consent was needed for the emergency work, but by law the council should have applied for one within 20 days.
That didn't happen, WCRC chief executive Darryl Lew told the Operations Committee on Tuesday.
"The failure to get consent at the time predates all the staff here. It's a legacy matter we're now having to deal with. I don't want any reflection on the current staff."
Gavin Palmer from Corsair Consulting told councillors the temporary structure did not meet engineering standards for a seawall.
A report by coastal engineer Michael Ellis found the wall had no formal toe or underlayer but did provide a ''modest but meaningful" protection for the dune.
Removing it would expose the backshore to increased risk from an 'erosion bite' as it moved north, Ellis said.
It would also involve machinery access, disturbing sand and vegetation that was recolonising the area, the management of contaminated fill and effects on penguin nesting.
The preferred option was to seek a short term consent and retain the wall until 2028, Ellis concluded.
That would give protection during the next erosion cycle and time to plan a coordinated removal.
Councillors were uneasy at the idea of locking in a removal date.
Councillor Peter Ewen said the rock pile had been doing the job it was supposed to.
"The sea was effectively knocking on the fences of those properties… you remove it you'll get the biggest protest since the Springbok Tour," he predicted.
Councillors Allan Birchfield and Andy Campbell also objected to the option of removing the rock.
"It would be silly to remove it," Campbell said.
And the council should not have to get a temporary consent to leave it in place, costing ratepayers $107,000, Birchfield said.
"This is the trouble. All the ratepayers' money gets burned up on these consultants and consents. I'll vote against it in protest."
Palmer said the council had originally planned to use the rock to build a permanent seawall, but that had been costed at $11 million, subsidies were no longer available and Hokitika ratepayers could not afford it.
When the beachfront properties were threatened by fast moving erosion, the rock stored on site was used under urgency to protect them.
A temporary consent would buy some time for both councils to work on a potential long-term strategy to deal with coastal erosion, Palmer said.
"This is a holding position to get through the next LTP [long-term plan] cycle," he said.
The committee agreed to seek a temporary consent, without the removal deadline, with Ewen and Birchfield abstaining.
Speaking after the meeting, Ewen told LDR he found it odd that the Westland District Council should serve an abatement notice on the WCRC for building a structure that protected its ratepayers.
"The former mayor, Bruce Smith asked us to put the wall up urgently and it's worked pretty well ever since," Ewen said.
It was ironic that the WDC had itself built a rock wall without consent two years ago, to protect its Franz Josef sewerage ponds, when a flood threatened, he said.
"It was against our engineer's advice but we haven't come down on them over that – we were trying to be helpful," Ewen said.
Westland mayor Helen Lash has been approached for comment.
Local Democracy Reporting is local-body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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