Ratepayers mop up after Govt

Once again the ratepayers of Christchurch have been left to clean up a mess the Government has left behind. This time it is in the red zone, where the Christchurch City Council is mulling buying a handful of houses from red zone stayers.

That is one of the options the council is weighing as it faces the issue of how to provide essential services such as water and sewerage to five of the isolated houses left in the red zone.

The council is required under the Local Government Act to provide such services to its residents, meaning that Government’s repeated assertions that services would not be provided was based on a falsehood, or at best a misunderstanding of local government’s responsibilities.

‘‘I can quite understand people’s attachment to their homes, but the reality is there will be no essential services in these areas,’’ said then Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee in 2011.

At the time, many uninsured red zone residents felt the Government’s offer of half the 2007 rateable value for their properties was unfair, and the Court of Appeal later agreed with that characterisation when many of them banded together as the ‘‘Quake Outcasts’’.

It said Brownlee had made an ‘‘unlawful’’ decision to discriminate against uninsured homeowners during the red zone buyout.

The Government then settled with the 16 Outcasts for 80 per cent of the 2007 rateable value of their improvements, having already paid out 100 per cent of the 2007 land value.

The homeowners who still remain will all have their own reasons for doing so but had they been dealt with fairly in the first instance, it is unlikely they would have dug in their heels.

Now, with crucial infrastructure wrecked in the red zone, and no certainty about how that land will be used in the future, the council has been stuck with the cost of providing bespoke services to them.

In the flat red zone, council figures show it costs nearly $500,000 a year to collect sewage from just 44 homes, although that cost is shared with the Government. And the broken pipes mean the effort comes with public health risks, as manholes overflow with sewage between cleanouts and overflows mean raw sewage seeps into the ground.

The 2010/11 earthquakes in Christchurch were unprecedented in their destruction and expecting an error-free response would be unreasonable.

But between ratepayers buying red zone houses because it may be cheaper than providing services to them, a clean-out of the Earthquake Commission board, and a State Services Commission inquiry into allegations of spying by Southern Response, it is clear the consequences of unfair decisions and shoddy behaviour are coming home to roost.

As we have recently reported, other parts of the country are already having to face the effects of climate change amplifying the impact of natural disasters. Anybody who saw the impact of the aftermath of cyclones Fehi and Gita in Buller, for example, would sympathise with both homeowners and local authorities as they wrestle with future threats to coastal communities.

The example of Christchurch shows that decisions made in haste and based on short-term economics could well lead to lingering problems and costs that will end up being borne by others in the future.