If not for the new $400,000 seawall on Port Waikato’s Sunset Beach, local Jo Poland says she wouldn’t have a house to live in.
By Jordan Smith of Local Democracy Reporting
Now, Poland and other people whose homes overlook the black sand beach are urging the Waikato District Council to help cover the $60,000 needed each year to maintain the seawall.
Poland has seen her beachfront home move ever closer to the sea due to coastal erosion, saying she was losing "at least one metre" every storm.
With the installation of the 1.8m high and 366m long wall made up of hundreds of poles and rock backfill, Poland’s fears of swells seven metres high claiming chunks of her home have been eased.
"It’s saved my house," she said bluntly.
"You just look out and the sea seems quite high, but usually when I walk down, actually it’s fine and the wall is doing its job.
"There’s nothing like opening those curtains when there’s a storm because there’s no street lights... it started not being such a delight when I was at risk of losing the house, so it’s really made all the difference."
The seawall’s success marks a long-awaited victory for Sunset Beach Surf Lifesaving Trust chairman Malcolm Beattie, who spearheaded raising all funding and campaigned for years to get consents to build from the council.
"You just look out and the sea seems quite high, but usually when I walk down, actually it’s fine and the wall is doing its job."
The council has previously said an independent commissioner was brought in to determine consent, and described the seawall as a community-led effort to protect dunes, public spaces and nearby homes.
Updated comments were sought, but the council could not respond by deadline.
All responsibility for upkeep and funding now rests solely on the trust – a non-sustainable solution going forward, Beattie says.
"Local and central [government] should have some skin in the game at least working with us... we’re doing council’s work here but we’re the ones that have got the risk and pay the money.
"If you looked at $60,000 a year for keeping it all contained, they spend more than that on toilet paper. This is where people are coming to recreate and that’s a council responsibility to provide services at the beach."
Beattie says the current council has made steps to forge a working relationship with the community, but it’s all talk before the "money hits the road".
The seawall has also provided relief on insurance worries for homeowners. Poland said she’s not covered because erosion is classified as "a natural event, not a natural hazard".
She said a 1996 geologist report produced before she built her home made no explicit mention of coastal erosion caused by rising sea levels.
"We get no support at all... there’s a bit of inequity going on from my perspective. As people lose their homes, they go away and they’re quiet because they’re too busy coping with things to keep fighting.
"They need a plan, and the Helen Clark Foundation has suggested that a new form of insurance for people dealing with the effects of climate change so the cost doesn’t all fall on homeowners."
The risk facing homeowners isn’t stopping new faces joining the neighbourhood, however.
Ruth Riding bought a coastal home just two months ago to live out her dream of running an Airbnb, and says the risk was "absolutely worth taking" despite having a few raised eyebrows at the purchase.
"I think people are just surprised but I think because the seawall had just been put in so there was a lot of hope."
- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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