Build a house on a swamp?

Would you build a house on a swamp? The Council has plans to open up our Flood Hazard Areas for housing.

Flood hazard area shaded in green.

The Horowhenua District Council has an online mapping tool, available for both Desktop and Mobile.

It’s worth spending a bit of time with the maps, turning layers on and off, zooming in and out, and clicking for more information.

In light of the Council’s desire to rezone some of the land around us to make additional housing possible, it’s interesting to look at the District Plan layer.

In the pair of screenshots below, for example, you can see that an enormous amount of the land between SH1 and the coast, from at least the border with Kāpiti and up as far as Ōhau (and perhaps beyond) is a Flood Hazard Area. Note that you must be zoomed out to 1:50,000 to see this layer.

Flood hazard area marked in green.
Flood hazard area marked in green.

It’s pretty easy to see that at least one of the proposed new housing areas lies right on a Flood Hazard Area.

Here’s that map showing the areas the Council wants to open up for housing.

Possible new housing areas under HDC Growth Plan.
Possible new housing areas under HDC Growth Plan.

2017 was a very wet year and anyone could easily see why those are flood hazard areas: because they were regularly, or mostly, underwater.

Strathnaver Drive puddle.
Strathnaver Drive puddle. Photo from around June 2017, but the puddle was there for many many months.

One thought on “Build a house on a swamp?”

  1. This is very interesting. We are currently looking at a house and land package on Strathnaver Drive so I’m very interested to read this. If possible could you email me with some info as we are localish (Paraparaumu) but looking to move to Waikawa Beach

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