Flood zone lessons

Auckland Council’s Healthy Waters department has stated that if the city were to be involved in flooding on the same scale as in early 2023, it could swamp up to 50,000 homes and businesses again, with many of them seeking compensation from the council, the Government, and the property owners’ insurance companies (Weekend Herald, Jan 27).

Now Auckland Council has issued a website showing all of the flood zones throughout Auckland city with the warning “check for flood risks before you buy or build”.

One would think that central government would be ensuring that the law was strong enough to enable local councils, such as Auckland Council, to have enough authority to enforce strict restrictions on building consents for building in flood zones, and in the most serious cases to be able to refuse to issue a building consent at all.

Instead, the new coalition Government has just overturned legislation introduced by the previous government aimed at improving the situation, and is now making it much easier for developers to build in floodrisk areas, and council staff are under increasing pressure to approve consents as a result.

Unfortunately, it won’t be the developers who pick up the cost of any possible future flood damage suffered by these properties, but the council and possibly the Government, because the developers will say that the council issued them with a consent, which means that the developers are not responsible for any flood damage.

Insurance companies are now also studying the flood zone maps issued by Auckland City and I am aware of cases where they are refusing to provide insurance cover for flood damage for homes located in a flood zone.

This matter needs to be dealt with by the new coalition Government with the gravest urgency, and in future all new developments will need to be able to cope with much greater levels of rainfall than in the past.

David Mairs, Glendowie. where a minority has serious historical grievances and should be managed carefully.

A referendum where the majority’s will prevails is not the right place to decide on a minority’s rights.

It is worse when an extreme party is tasked with drafting Treaty principles.

I believe Labour went too far with solely M¯aori names for government departments and te reo greetings. They focused on semantics over the real needs of M¯aori, an economically disadvantaged ethnic minority.

National’s approach, bringing back English names and not veering too far the other way, is correct.

We must put the genie back in the bottle and focus on real problems like the economy.

Kushlan Sugathapala, Epsom.