Holding back the tide
Hawke’s Bay is tackling the challenge of coastal erosion and rising sea levels. How it succeeds could set a template for other councils to follow, writes Marty Sharpe.
IN DEPTH
On a good day the Pacific Ocean washes gently against the sweeping coastline of Hawke’s Bay. The waves dab the shore then withdraw, a slow steady current taking the sand and gravel from the crumbling cliffs of Cape Kidnappers/Te Kauwaea-Ma¯ ui northward.
The cape was the mythological hook used by Ma¯ ui to fish up the North Island. Now the ocean that relinquished the bay to Ma¯ ui’s hook is slowly claiming it back.
On bad days you can see, hear and feel the gravel, rocks and sand being clawed back to the water.
It’s not unique. But this has been one of the most acutely affected areas, and its councils were among the first to confront issues they could no longer ignore.
The manner in which the councils reacted is being watched closely by others who see it as a successful precedent. Counterparts in Wellington, Otago, Canterbury and elsewhere are among those watching what happens here, and how the Government responds.
Sixty-three of the country’s 78 councils have coastal boundaries. They’re all at different stages when it comes to addressing coastal hazards. Some have barely given it a thought.
The basics of the Hawke’s Bay situation are this: in 2014 Hastings District Council, Napier City Council and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council agreed to work together in establishing which bits of the coast were affected, how they were affected, what solutions might work, and how residents would be involved.
The strategy looks at the coast between the cape and Tangoio, north of Napier, splits it into 15 ‘‘cells’’, predicts the effect of coastal erosion in 50 and 100 years’ time, and proposes response options. Called ‘‘pathways’’, they can include renourishment, groynes, sea walls or managed retreat.
The head of the strategy, Peter Beaven, says he thought getting to this stage would be the easy bit. He knows now it wasn’t. The tricky bit will be broaching subjects such as funding and when the pathways should be kicked into action.
‘‘The problem is that we’re at the leading edge of all of this, and any agreement we might get from them will be precedentsetting, and the Government will be very careful about how any conversation goes.
‘‘If you’re the Government and you know you have to do something about global warming and its consequences, and you want to think about what that might look like, one possibility is for them to fund or assist to fund protection for their own assets along the coastline of the country, and at the moment they’re not doing it. I think they should be and that’s a conversation we’ll need to have.
‘‘We’ve got some real problems because the government’s been completely inactive in this space until very recently. I compare that to Britain, where the government has been right round the entire coastline and told local bodies what they had to do, and helped fund it.’’
Getting community representatives appointed to the group early on, holding public meetings and giving affected people access to experts has been critical in getting to this stage, Beaven says.
Martin Bates, a community representative for the Clifton/Te Awanga cell from the outset, agrees.
‘‘At the end of the day, the ratepayer will be paying for it. It’s people’s lives we’re talking about. The council for many decades has been allowing new development along the coast, so they have some responsibility in this. In each community there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what the threats are and what has or hasn’t happened.
‘‘Getting it on the table, out in the open and making sure the information is fed back to the community is important. We’ve done that through public meetings, a newsletter and making sure the four representatives were talking to people.’’
While working out cost and who pays, the group also needs to work out the times at which something needs to be done. Trigger points, they’re called.
‘‘It’s the point at which we determine we have to go ahead with groynes, or a sea wall, or managed retreat, or whatever the strategy is for that part of the coastline. The trigger point could be reached by insurance companies refusing to provide cover for an area any longer; it could be because there were multiple inundations in an area,’’ Beaven says.
‘‘We’re dealing with the interests of a whole lot of people who dwell on the coast and whose first instinct, completely understandably, is to stay and fight, and fund the fight. But there will be a point when we have to say that’s no longer a sensible or viable option and we have to do something else.’’
A fund is being set up to pay for the work that will be required. Ratepayers will contribute, probably starting in the next few years, Beaven says.
‘‘The principle is that you should not be publicly funding a private benefit. But you do need to evaluate whether there is also a public benefit, through beach access and so on, then you need
to consider affordability. If it’s just plainly unaffordable for those private landowners – say, a $2000 annual rates increase – then you need to decide if some of it should become a public cost.
‘‘With any of the coastal works undertaken, we’ll have to go through an assessment of who the beneficiaries are and then work out the split of public and private spending. That public spending will include the entire community, and that’s where we’ll form some sort of general rate to reflect the fact that we’re all at fault here because we’ve all caused global warming.’’
MANAGED RETREAT IS THE TRICKIEST SOLUTION
Nobody yet has their heads around what managed retreat will look like, he says. ‘‘Once you start thinking about what it will cost thousands of people to move and build again, you’re talking huge amounts of money. Enormous amounts. And there’s a big question about how much local bodies should contribute.’’
One of those watching the Hawke’s Bay situation closely is Greater Wellington Regional Council natural hazards analyst Iain Dawe.
The Ka¯ piti Coast experience of a few years ago, where poor communication saw residents revolt after the council’s disastrous attempt to map coastal hazards, is still fresh in his mind, and yet to be resolved.
‘‘Partly as a result of that, and looking forward at potential issues of coastal flooding due to storm events, it became apparent a lot of councils in our region were dealing with the same thing, and a lot of the problems happen because small councils are often busy, under-resourced or don’t have the staff expertise.
‘‘The idea was that it would be better to join together to tackle some of these issues as a collective. That’s where the idea of developing a regional natural hazard strategy came from.
‘‘What’s happened in Hawke’s Bay, and what we’ve been thinking over the past few years, is about how to engage people in a way [that makes them] feel empowered and part of the process, rather than feel something is being done to them by an outside agency.
‘‘The Hawke’s Bay process has been a way of getting a citizen jury, if you will, involved in setting the future direction of how we manage things.
That’s what’s been missing in our region and other places.
‘‘It’s not chump change and they’re not small issues. When you’re talking about long, slow-boiling issues like sea level rise that are going to come to bear over decades and are intergenerational, it’s important people have a long view, rather than short-term of just protecting their house.’’
A trial of the Hawke’s
Bay precedent has begun at Makara, on Wellington’s west coast, where the regional council has been working with Wellington City Council and the community on coastal erosion.
‘‘The thinking is that, if we can get a good process like Hawke’s Bay, we might be able to address some of the issues that we’ve had in places like Ka¯ piti,’’ Dawe says. ‘‘That’s the thinking, to get communities involved. In order to get some value for staff time and money, it would be more efficient if we had councils working together, like in Hawke’s Bay, rather than just one council running it.’’
LONG-TERM VIEW MAKES SENSE
Neville Peat, author of The Invading Seas – Coastal Hazard and Climate Change in Aotearoa New Zealand, says Hawke’s Bay is ‘‘ahead of the game’’ for a few reasons, but mainly because it is starting to plan for a coastal hazard fund. ‘‘The idea of having a fund build up over the next 10-20 years is a good one, and to make it inter-generational, so you can spread the load, is good. ‘‘Councils spend years and years on district plans with heaps of consultation with their communities. What I’ve tried to say in my book is that there needs to be some more definite steerage and support from central government. Some consistency would be good. We need to relook at the national policy statement, which lacks timeframes for getting things done and left it rather too open. ‘‘A revision of the RMA with more attention to climate change, which just asks that it be ‘taken into account’. That kind of language isn’t helpful.
‘‘I think the central government response to climate change will be about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That is certainly important, but you can’t be going down that track without doing a lot more work on the adaptation side, because that’s the thing hitting people in the face right now in places like the West Coast, [Hawke’s Bay] and Ka¯ piti.’’
REPORTS DUE SOON
Climate Change Minister James Shaw says the impacts of climate change on communities, including the question of how the responsibility for the costs of adapting should be shared, were included in a recent Cabinet paper, to be made public soon.
And a final report from the Productivity Commission on Local Government Funding and Financing, including the question of funding climate change and other hazards, was open to submissions until Friday, and is expected to deliver its final report to the Government at the end of November.
‘‘While Hawke’s Bay has led the way, there are a number of other regions who are taking steps to develop coastal hazards strategies,’’ Shaw says, noting the Makara example and others by Dunedin City Council and Auckland Council.
‘‘It is also fair to say that some councils are further ahead with coastal strategies than others. In some cases, that is a result of limited resources and limited access to expertise, or the wherewithal to commission the kind of expert information required.
‘‘This variability between councils is another aspect that needs to be considered in formulating a national adaptation framework.’’
On Beaven’s question of whether the Government is contributing its share for the protection of state assets, Shaw says this is something the Government, like councils, is considering.
‘‘It will be important to work together on a system that can adequately and fairly share the costs. We are acutely aware that better efforts to work with communities and councils to address the threat of sea level rise have been needed, which is why the Government published the updated Coastal Hazards and Climate Change Guidance for local government that sets out a process councils and communities can follow to plan for the future of their coastlines.’’
He says work will get under way this year on the first national climate change risk assessment and ‘‘we are acutely aware that better efforts to work with communities and councils to understand the impacts of climate change have been needed, which is why we intend to get work under way this year to establish a national climate change risk assessment system that will gather better understandings of the challenges facing New Zealand communities’’.