‘Mother Nature’ has given us a huge wake up call and left us reeling from these two cataclysmic weather events, revealing the true face of our country.
Drained swamps and cliff edges are not safe places to build. We must think in longer terms than election cycles when making decisions for our future.
Growing timber producing forests for carbon credit is just ‘Green Washing’ when the slash washed away in floods causes so much damage. Soil suitable for growing grass for dairy farms is not suitable for growing crops. We can’t eat pine plantations. We can protect mature trees, as the ‘Urban Ngahere’ helps to stabilise hillsides and affords wind protection while the trees drink the rain and evaporate it into the atmosphere, making a cooler city and more stable environment.
The country has lost our ‘food basket’ from the East Coast with many orchards, farmed for generations, being decimated by the cyclone. Government promised to legislate for protection of our ‘arable land’. Soil suitable for growing crops is only 4% of New Zealand. This includes Pukekohe where our most fertile soil is being built on. Profit of developers can’t overrule our social needs, including food independence. We can’t go on intensifying ‘willy nilly’.
Dominion Road goes down a hill and up a hill and at the bottom is aptly named ‘Valley Road’. During the February storm when half a year’s rainfall fell in three days, Auckland’s topography of hills and valleys became clear and streams flowed again. Queen Street was a river flowing to the harbour and the Viaduct land is reclaimed from the sea.
Our neighbourhood arterial roads, Karangahape, New North, Ponsonby and Richmond Roads are formed on ridges. Falling from Richmond Road where Cockburn Street changes its name to Hakanoa Street at Dryden Street is the valley. It extends from Grey Lynn Park to Hakanoa Reserve, to the wetland by the supermarket to Cox’s Bay Reserve. Creeks in the valleys that once flowed into streams to the sea, with wetlands and estuaries, were drained and replaced by a hidden network of culverts and drains beneath road catchpits.
The storm of 27 February revealed the original watercourse and overland flow paths, becoming a river forcing its way to the sea. Its impeded flow flooded homes and Westmoreland Street industrial buildings exacerbated by blocked catchpits. Change is necessary. Auckland Transport must concentrate on their core service, the maintenance of roads and footpaths, berms and street trees, including keeping kerbs and catchpits clear, instead of trying to socially engineer us out of cars before there is a public transport network.
Covering the land with asphalt and concrete, building on every skerrick of land caused this problem. In subdivision design the leftover, ‘unbuildable’ piece, usually the wetland, is required to be gifted to council as a ‘reserve’. CCO Panuku must stop selling our reserves. Golf courses must become ‘recreational reserves’. These natural ’sponges’ along with gardens on each property and tree lined street berms, allowed rain to soak into the water table beneath the ground. Residential extensions have gotten away with building on this impermeable area by the use of retention tanks, holding the water to dribble out later. Unfortunately the network is a ‘combined sewer/ stormwater main’, too small to cope with average storms, spilling sewage into the sea, let alone a deluge.
Infrastructure must be built before intensification, starting with withdrawal of the government’s ‘Housing Enabling Bill’ that allowed three storey, three houses per section everywhere. The ‘Unitary Plan’ allowed sufficient intensification in the right places. The only amendments required from this current flood knowledge, are increasing ‘flood sensitive areas’ where building restrictions, of open facade to a designated height allow the free flow of flood water through the basement, and inclusion of ‘notable trees’ to the ‘tree register’,with government ‘tree protection’ to stop the cutting down of about 1000 mature trees per week.
The February floods and Cyclone Gabrielle have shown us how vulnerable we are. We need long term future planning, putting our land and the environment first. Money, growing the GDP and developers’ profits can no longer rule decision making. (Gael Baldock, community advocate)
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