Protection: A matter of discretion
Oral presentation by Keith Newman
Spokesperson for WOW (Walking on Water) Incorporated
To the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, 1.15pm, Thursday 10 June 2010

WOW Incorporated is placing before Hawke’s Bay Regional Council a unique opportunity to bring closure to a longstanding problem it has been deliberating on for many years.
Reports have been commissioned and challenged, meetings with the community have stirred up all sorts of reactions and responses, and there’s been a never ending stream of negative press relating to the erosion problems and threat to public and private property at Haumoana, Te Awanga and Clifton.
The WOW proposal to Save the Cape Coast is designed with the most practical and positive outcomes in mind, it is a solution where everyone wins.
As you will know our future hangs in the balance. In fact decisions made by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council over the next few weeks will determine whether the Cape Coast continues to become a demolition zone or one of the keys to putting the heart back into Hawke’s Bay.

Our local authorities gave us three options for dealing with the erosion and inundation threat that has been facing this coast for decades:  ‘do nothing’, ‘managed retreat’ or ‘hard engineering’.

Doing nothing is not an option; unless something is done the problem will escalate and become a huge embarrassment and a social and economic liability to the region. Retreat is a declaration of defeat and based on our research will cost at least double the protection efforts we are proposing.

Many of the properties at risk are family homes occupied by ordinary New Zealanders; some are well off but there are also many young couples with children struggling with a mortgage and those who are in their retirement years. Their homes might be their only asset and security. Without coastal protection this community is under a cloud of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

A carefully engineered field of groynes and low level crest strengthening will however restore confidence, security and hope, extending our stay by 50-years or more.
Alongside the award winning restaurants and wineries, café’s, museums, tourist operators, accommodation and camping grounds, are a growing number of smart small businesses including artists and craftspeople, innovators and entrepreneurs who think the Cape Coast is a great place to live and work.
WOW is here for all 850 home owners and the growing number of businesses along the coast and determined to protect both private and public assets.
We believe the Cape Coast has hardly touched on its true potential as a regional asset, showcasing the best the bay has to offer. With protection there will be many opportunities for community growth and development and for the tourism and hospitality sector to contribute significantly to visitor growth in the region.
Those opportunities can only be enhanced by the National Cycleway, also known as the Rotary Pathways Trust Cycleway, running right along our beachfront. WOW welcomes this development but believes every effort should be made to ensure vulnerable sections of this track are not washed away during high swells and turbulent wave action.

We have an all encompassing vision for the Cape Coast and all it has to offer; including beautifying and enhancing the area on either side of the cycleway, and we think Hawke’s Bay Regional Council should not only be part of that vision, but help to drive it forward.

Our submission to the annual plan therefore is two-fold: ‘A Cape Coast Community Vision’ which is a forward looking statement of intent to rebrand and invigorate the community and ‘Hard engineering not a hard decision’, the framework for a detailed plan to Save the Cape Coast.

This is our second submission to the annual plan. Since this time last year WOW has made considerable progress with our coastal engineering proposal; our committee has met most weeks, we have been part of the Joint Councils Working Group on erosion and have kept the local community fully informed through newsletters and public meetings.

Through the Joint Council process we have heard all the reasons why our journey to resource consent will be difficult and complex. We believe we have responded professionally and responsibly to most of the challenges placed before us.

Our coastal engineer Steve Moynihan, of Moynihan Coastal Consultants, has continued to refine a hard engineering solution that we believe will meet all the criteria for resource consent.
Meanwhile the Hastings District Council executive team has had a long hard look at our research on the logistics and cost of ‘managed retreat’.  When we merged our data the numbers clearly showed this was going to be far more costly than ‘hard engineering’.

Based on a section of the homes and businesses currently at risk, it will cost at least $12.7 million for removal, clean-up and relocation, including power and water, and around $4 million for alternative access roads.
The economic cost of removing the homes in the first stage of ‘retreat’ did not take into account the social impact on home owners or the 200 or so other homes facing the same ultimatum over the next 5-10 years. Either way ‘managed retreat would rip the heart out of our community.
The consequence of moving the 21 most at-risk beachside homes on Clifton Rd wasn’t accounted for either. These homes are all that prevent the sea washing over the road and inundating more homes that are below sea level, including the new housing development which has just been approved, along with vineyards, orchards and farmlands.

The first stage of our hard engineering solution; staged construction of seven groynes between the Clifton Rd Reserve down to the existing groyne at the Tukituki river mouth, can be achieved forr under $5.5 million. If left to fill naturally the cost of the groynes would only be $4 million including maintenance.
The extra $1.5 million is to pre-fill the groynes with metal, an option preferred by this council’s engineers. Of course we would rather the groynes to fill naturally as this would simply be trapping gravel on our own beaches that might otherwise be harvested by the Awatoto shingle plant.
The Hastings District Council executive team has suggested the $4 million to replace road access might be better invested in the groyne field; half for the current proposal to protect Haumoana and the balance on a stage two project to help curb erosion at Te Awanga and Clifton.
Meanwhile, the challenge put to WOW by the Joint Councils group is to prove that our protection plan can pass muster. To that end both councils have engaged independent planning consultant Dave Serjeant of MereStone, to determine the likelihood of success in achieving resource consent.
We want to thank councilors for funding Mr Serjeant who we have found helpful, respectful, and thorough. He has begun evaluating our efforts, has outlined a programme of work and set out a budget for the likely cost of that work.
Now we need to commission those reports and employ the experts required, along with a more detailed design for the groyne field, as we move into the next stage of preparing for resource consent.
WOW, has already invested around $12,000 of community funds, and will continue its own research to support the proposal. Meanwhile funding allocated from Hastings council will deliver a peer review of our coastal engineer’s ‘crenulate bay’ or coastal equilibrium approach.
This is to ensure his underlying theory for construction and the impact of the groyne field can withstand expert scrutiny from the presiding commissioners and/or the Environment Court.
From the outset all that WOW has asked from local authorities is that they cover the cost of getting our proposal through the resource consent process. Hastings will put aside funding as part of its annual plan budgeting and now we are formally asking Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to do the same.

We are increasingly of the view that our case, if given the go-ahead by Mr Serjeant, should go direct to the Environment Court. That would reduce the compliance processing costs, simplify the process and remove any concerns Hawke’s Bay Regional Council may have about contributing to consent costs and supporting our plan to protect the Cape Coast.
The commitment by WOW is significant. We undertake to ensure the construction of the groyne field at minimal cost to local or regional ratepayers. WOW already has a lawyer’s letter from a local benefactor guaranteeing up to $3 million. If you add half the replacement roading cost pledged by Hastings we already have $5 million toward stage one of our groyne field.

If we can show that we have the support of both Hastings District and Hawke’s Bay Regional council, we believe other community funding is likely to be made available, making any ratepayer costs negligible.
WOW joined with both councils in the Joint Working Group which had a mandate to find a solution to the erosion problems at Haumoana and Te Awanga. It was agreed from the outset that our groyne field proposal would be given serious consideration if we gave equal consideration to managed retreat.
Once we were well advanced in achieving the objective we were confused and disappointed when we received an email from Hawke’s Bay Regional Council group asset manager Mike Adye, stating that the council could not support WOW’s plan.
He stated ‘the regional community … wants natural beaches along the Hawke’s Bay coastline’ as stated in the National Coastal Policy Statement and the proposed Regional Coastal Environment Plan. He said WOW was seeking something fundamentally different from what the regional community wanted.

On the surface it appeared that we had just wasted a year of community consultation, weekly meetings and high level discussions with the Joint Councils group? Had we been labouring under an illusion? Was the stance of Hawke’s Bay Regional councilors really to oppose hard engineering at all costs or was this or just a safe regulatory fallback position?
According to our research the National Coastal Policy Document, the Regional Coastal Policy Document and the Resource Management Act all have sufficient flexibility to allow hard engineering if it is proven to be a ‘last resort’ and ‘the best practicable option’.
WOW was also informed that the aforementioned legislation prohibited Hastings District and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council from having any say in whether hard engineering could go ahead or not.  

To better understand the central government position WOW called a meeting with our two local MPs Craig Foss and Chris Tremain, attended by local businesses and the Hastings executive team. We did not invite HBRC officers because at this stage we feared the council had declared a strategic opposition to our proposal.
The MPs were surprised at the progress WOW had made, were pleased to see a partnership with Hastings was being considered and offered their full support if that partnership could be formalised.

According to subsequent letters we have received from both the Minister of Conservation and the Minister for the Environment: Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and Hastings District Council have in fact got full ‘discretion’ in this matter.
So let us clear up a couple of things. If Hawke’s Bay Regional Council never planned to allow hard engineering protection, why was the possibility ever put to the community in the first place? Why was $100,000 of ratepayer money invested in the Tonks Report if there were no plans to act on the recommendations?

It is true, that a groyne field in the form presented by Murray Tonks, placed an impossible burden on this community. That’s why this voluntary community group has spent many hundreds of hours transforming the proposal into a clearly workable engineering and business plan.
So what happens if Mr Serjeant reports back favourably, stating WOW’s protection proposal has a good chance at getting through resource consent? Having helped pay for his services, would the regional council turn its back on an opportunity to save this iconic tourism focused coastal community?
We’ve done our homework, consulted the experts, undertaken the research and have the costings and documentation to prove that our proposed groyne field, is indeed the best practicable option and a ‘last resort’.
The Hastings District Council concludes that its engagement with WOW over the erosion issue has been based on a sound public policy framework, considering whether the proposed solution will work, whether it can be consented and how will it be funded. The existing groyne proves the solution works, the consenting issues are being worked through currently, and the funding issues are now negligible.
WOW remains positive and hopeful that the apparent opposition from HBRC was simply a misunderstanding, that the council did not intend to undermine the co-operative talks and that councilors remain open to what we believe is a commonsense solution.
In reality the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has to take part of the credit for WOWs groyne field plan. All we have done is evolve and refine the proposals put forward in the Tonks Report making the hard engineering protection plan acceptable and affordable for the community. 
We’re essentially giving the proposal back to you in a form that is achievable. You wanted community input and that’s exactly what you’ve now got, a detailed proposal that will solve the erosion problem, build volume back on our beaches and give the Cape Coast a fighting chance for a vital future.
It is now clear that protection is a matter of discretion. Rather than allowing erosion and inundation to turn our communities into a demolition zone, forcing us to move to some as yet undesignated location at huge cost, we ask Hawke’s Bay Regional councilors to stand with WOW and the Hastings District Council in Saving the Cape Coast.
Together we can rebuild confidence and transform the literal edge of Hawke’s Bay, so the Cape Coast becomes a place we’re all proud of. Our future is in your hands.

Protection: A matter of discretion (50.5kb Doc file)

WOW (Walking on Water)
For further information see www.capecoast.co.nz
or contact chairperson: Ann Redstone: Cell: 027-3867907
Email: agoodin@slingshot.co.nz or spokesperson Keith Newman 06-8750116