Lone red-zoner costs $74,000
Christchurch red-zoner Martin Francis has no neighbours for more than 300 metres in any direction and he’s not about to budge.
After refusing several Crown and council buy-out offers, which he says will not cover an equivalent home elsewhere, the city council has now spent $74,000 to provide his Bexley house with permanent water and sewerage services.
For years, the council has taken away wastewater by sucker truck and provided water in pipes above the ground, but head of strategic policy Emma Davis said this was no longer sustainable. The pipes will run from his home to Pages Rd, about 750m away.
In 2011, then-Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee said there would be "no essential services in these areas’’, but the Christchurch City Council says it is legally obliged to provide them.
Council contractors connected new water and wastewater services to Francis’ home last week – $23,000 for the water supply and $51,000 for the wastewater.
Francis plans to stay there unless he was made an offer that meant he could buy a house of the same standard elsewhere. Built in 2002, his four-bedroom home is double-glazed with a river view. His rates bill is nearly $1200 a year.
He said he recently went to an auction for a 100-year-old house on a section that had sunk, which sold for what he would get from the Government’s offer for his property.
The council has been trying to buy five properties in the Avon River red zone that are a long way from other residential areas and therefore difficult and expensive to service. One property owner has accepted the council’s offer so far.
Council figures show it previously cost nearly $500,000 a year to collect sewage from about 50 homes in the flat land red zone. The total cost of maintaining infrastructure to redzoned homes was reported as costing more than $3 million in 2014.
In the 2017/18 annual plan, the cost of red zone wastewater services was listed at $118,000, but the council was not able to provide an updated cost breakdown on Friday.
Davis said the council was working through services changes with each red-zone property owner as requirements differed due to their location and distance to other services.
Acting head of three waters and waste John
Moore said there was no specific amount budgeted for servicing red zone properties.
Meanwhile, the Crown last August reopened its buyout offer to red-zoners, with the purchase price to be the
2007/8 rateable value of the property – the same as was offered after the earthquakes.
The offer is open to 142 property owners, of which 28 are in the Avon River red zone, Southshore and South New Brighton; 24 are in Brooklands;
59 are in the Port Hills and 31 are in Waimakariri.
So far, two property owners have accepted the deal, which expires on April 30. Another 11 property owners are considering it. The Government has set aside $20 million for the new offers.
Red zone stayer Brent Cairns, whose home sits among a cluster of red-zoned properties in Kaiapoi, said if he was to accept the Government’s offer now he would lose a great deal of money.
‘‘I can’t understand why anyone would consider it as a worthy offer because it’s the values of 2007 and
2008. Property values have considerably changed since then.’’
The Government has said it would consider using any leftover funds from the $20m on other Christchurch regeneration costs, but no decision has been made yet. It has also set aside $12.5m for ex gratia payments to quake outcasts under the same conditions, of which $12.1m has been paid out.