Twelve locations across Auckland have been identified for the development of long parks to accommodate future flood waters
In the wake of five extreme weather events in the region just this year, Auckland Council is scrambling to put together an ambitious initiative to reduce flooding risk.
Twelve waterways have been earmarked as the first wave of a proposed development of a set of long parks that will sometimes act as temporary lakes filled with water otherwise likely to find its way into people’s homes.
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Council officers told Auckland’s councillors yesterday that difficulties with upsizing stream culverts have forced them to explore other avenues as part of their Making Space for Water programme.
Instead, they propose to buy at-risk properties along waterways and transform them into green space that will every now and then become blue space.
“We're going to be building a whole lot of new linear parks… and for 0.1 percent of the time they will be blue, as they will be temporary lakes,” said Auckland Council head of healthy waters Nick Vigar.
It’s a capital-intensive project that remains subject to government funding and policy decisions around property buyback.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced in June a funding arrangement with disaster-affected councils to support voluntary buyouts.
Questions remain around the exact layout of the funding, but the fact remains that there are 1209 displaced households across the region, with more still being added from flooding on May 9.
And with the risk of extreme events rising as the climate changes, stormwater has quickly floated to near the top of the council’s priorities.
Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson said many people in the community “have been living and breathing all of the trouble of January 27”, and might be wondering why the blue-green network of linear parks still needs a lot of consultation before it can be given a green light.
Council staff said the plan may lead to a very different reality to houses just next door to one another, meaning “high touch” consultation will be needed before any shovels can hit soil.
Vigar said it would depend on how much the public wanted to “buy in to any buyout”.
Flooding across the region has damaged some houses while neighbouring properties remain untouched, all based on a complicated cocktail of factors – proximity to waterways, elevation, quality of stormwater infrastructure and whether drains had been recently cleaned out.
The blue-green network shows another way in which not all Aucklanders are built equally flood-protected.
The council’s storm recovery team said it had been out at a public meeting in Muriwai recently, where people were in tears saying they needed more help.
The temporary lakes of the blue-green network won’t represent much help for Muriwai residents, however, as it covers a set of waterway catchment areas mainly towards the centre of the city.
The locations are:
- Wairau Creek (Totaravale, Lower Sunnynook, Milford)
- Kumeū River (Kumeū)
- Waimoko Stream (Swanson)
- Opanuku Stream (Henderson)
- Porters Stream (Glen Eden)
- Whau Stream (Blockhouse Bay)
- Cox’s Creek (Grey Lynn)
- Gribblehirst Park/St Leonards Road (Meola/Epsom)
- Te Auaunga Awa (Mt Roskill)
- Harania Creek (Mangere)
- Te Ararata Greenway (Mangere)
- Whangapouri (Pukekohe)
They cover parts of the city hard hit by floods, including Wairau Valley, Mt Albert, Henderson and Kumēu.
The storm recovery office said it had been in frequent consultation with Kainga Ora while putting the plan together.
There are significant Kainga Ora developments in the Mangere and Mt Roskill catchments, as well as scattered properties across much of the rest of the proposed network.
North Shore councillor Richard Hills said flood-affected Aucklanders wanted to know whether they could expect a buyout, but suggested that many who had been badly impacted might not be able to rely on council buying them out due to financial constraints.
“Where is the point where we stop leaving people in limbo?” he asked. “At what point are we sadly ripping off that band-aid?”
Vigar said it was important to manage expectations around buyouts.
Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa ward councillor Christine Fletcher wanted to know how he’d be able to do this with people who had been “savagely hurt” by the floods and would want quick answers.
Council recovery manager Mat Tucker said things were moving quickly enough to provide real-time updates so there was at least information they could give to people still in tough situations.
“Most people are now wanting final answers,” Fletcher said.
Hills said he was pleased to see this focus on blue-green infrastructure.
He’s previously been a champion of the of Te Ara Awataha greenway in Northcote, where the Awataha Stream was brought back to the surface for the first time in nearly 70 years.
It was just one of many waterways that has been incrementally paved over as Auckland spread out over the isthmus and beyond.
Mayor Wayne Brown was also enthusiastic about the idea of the blue-green network, on Thursday sending out a press release saying he had “doubled down” his support for the programme.
While he was careful to say he didn’t think people should expect to be able to get a buyout, he did see the programme and its involved selected buyouts as a good use of the public purse
“Auckland Council is not a guarantor for private properties, nor is it responsible for compensating landowners for loss due to severe weather events,” he said. “However, some financially prudent acquisition for stormwater solutions that benefit the wider community would be an appropriate use of public funding.”
The next step is public engagement as well as a series of meetings with local boards, before the councillors make final decisions in September.
Waitākere ward councillor Shane Henderson acknowledged that the turning gears of local government must seem maddeningly slow to those who were still displaced.
“We cannot and central government cannot move as quickly as residents actually need,” he said. “That’s a physical impossibility when you lose your home and we have to do a bunch of things like policy work and some of the less sexy stuff to figure out what we can actually do about this disaster.”
