Petone's foreshore, particularly Seaview through to Eastborne, was at risk. Photo: Supplied/ Dan Bailey
Council consent staff are coming under pressure to give the go-ahead to developments in flood-risk areas, a Greater Wellington Regional Council climate risk expert says.
Meanwhile, the council's chief executive is pledging to stand up to those trying to stop risk assessments from being written into regional housing plans.
Council hazards advisor Dr Iain Dawe said councils have rules in place to try to prevent risky developments, but somehow someone always finds a way around them.
"Working with our consent staff, I see the pressure that they are under to stamp consents and allow stuff to happen.
"It's really important that we stay firm and say look, these areas should be excluded from intensifying development, and over time the reality is we are going to have to be withdrawing investment and actually providing some room."
"I see the pressure that they are under to stamp consents and allow stuff to happen" - Council hazards advisor Iain Dawe
'Ridiculous process'
Porirua City Council is currently working on a housing intensification plan.
In his recent submission on the proposal, Dawe argued against allowing medium- and high-density development in coastal risk zones in Porirua.
Greater Wellington Regional Council chief executive Nigel Corry said the tension between developers and council over what was allowed to be built was longrunning, and needed to end.
"This country... has been locked in this ridiculous process of housing [developers] coming to a regional entity [which has] a regional policy statement and aspirations around that, but it ends up in this point of tension and it has for decades and the paradigm has to change."
A map showing parts of the Wellington region at risk from coastal flooding. Photo: Greater Wellington Regional Council
Corry said he met with Wairarapa mayors and council chief executives last week. He said Wairarapa councils were currently refreshing their combined district plan - a process that usually attracts pushback and sometimes legal threats from residents questioning flood risk modelling and data.
"We all basically agreed... that when the material goes into the district plan - which it will - we will stand up together, mayor to mayor, CE to CE ... to actually defend the data in the district plan.
"That sort of conversation hasn't happened before."
Their comments came during a meeting of the Greater Wellington Regional Council's climate committee which was discussing the issue of sea level rise.
The council heard from experts Richard Levy and Tim Naish, who said much of Wellington's harbour and the capital's south coast was sinking - on top of already unavoidable sea level rise.
Levy said Petone's foreshore, particularly Seaview through to Eastborne, was in the firing line, and would be in serious trouble in just two decades.
"We have to adapt to unavoidable 30cm of sea level rise, that's a given, so we should be planning for that.
"And remember that 30cm in the Wellington region turns that [damaging storm categorised as likely occurring once in a century] into an annual event.
"That's unavoidable."
Sea rising, land sinking
Dawe said built-up areas like Wellington's CBD were also sinking.
He said the public needed to reckon with what places were worth protecting, but they did not seem ready to hear it.
Dawe said it was not just the built up areas that faced getting swamped.
"In places like Porirua Harbour where you have got roads and housing butting up against our coastal wetlands, we may start to see some of those wetlands getting drowned out."
Levy said their sea rise group was working to make their nationwide mapping more granular.
Early versions are able to detect, for example, how much the land is sinking for a specific Mount Victoria home.
"Relative to its neighbours you can see it subsiding, and you can actually go and see where they've tried to repair [it].
"You can measure that from space."
Greater Wellington Regional Council latest sea level trends report will be completed this year.