We’re preparing for a changing coastline
Coastlines by their very nature are constantly changing – daily, weekly, yearly and over decades. Those with lifelong connections to the Kāpiti Coast District will have memories of our coast both eroding and building up over the years.
It’s clear coastal communities like ours are facing more frequent, and more damaging natural hazards such as coastal erosion and inundation (flooding by the sea) due to climate change. This is because global warming causes polar ice to melt, ocean waters to expand and sea levels to rise. It creates more frequent and extreme storms, and unseasonal weather.
Over time the increased frequency and significance of change to our coastline has become the ‘new normal’. This means some places are becoming more vulnerable to regular incursions by the sea.
Council’s primary concern is for community infrastructure and assets like roads, pipes and parks that are being damaged more often by increasingly severe weather. Eventually, even ‘new normal’ high tides will cause regular damage. The cost of repairs falls on us all as they’re paid out of rates.
We need to figure out whether it’s worth continually paying for repairs or adapt in other ways. There are several options – more dune planting, seawalls, raised floors, relocatable buildings, or changes to where we build. There could be future technological solutions we can’t even imagine today. We don’t know yet which options we should or could take. But the longer we delay acting, the more constrained and expensive our options get.
In Kāpiti we have faced coastal hazards in the past and understand the issues very well – but there’s a saying: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. We need scientifically sound information about what is happening to our coastline and what changes we can expect in future.
Like other coastal communities around the country we are using local knowledge along with central government guidance and the latest national and international science to help us prepare to deal with coastal hazards.
More information will soon be available in a report we’ve commissioned called ‘Coastal hazard susceptibility and vulnerability assessment for the Kāpiti Coast District coastline’.
The methodology for the assessment was published on our website and included in LIMs (Land Information Memoranda) from June 2021. Read it at www.kapiticoast. govt.nz/coastal-science.
The assessment is by coastal engineering and environmental experts Jacobs New Zealand Ltd who have undertaken similar work here and internationally.
It was peer reviewed by Greater Wellington Regional Council and coastal engineering experts Beca Ltd. Jacobs also met with critics Coastal Ratepayers United (CRU) to discuss their views on the methodology in late 2021.
We’ve set up the Takutai Kāpiti project to help Council tap into community views and values before any decisions are made. Community input and advice will be led by the newly established Coastal Advisory Panel (CAP), supported by but independent of Council. The process and the panel were co-designed by local and regional council staff, Tangata Whenua, and key critics of Council’s previous approach to planning for coastal changes – CRU and North Ōtaki Beach Residents Group.
The science report is just one input of many. The project will bring together good science, economic and social research, expert planning, indigenous knowledge, and community values. It involves identifying the problem and looking for solutions together. But there’s been a lot of disinformation circulating. Here, we give you the facts.