Horowhenua District Council believe our area is growing. In its Growth Strategy plan it’s looked at Waikawa Beach and seen an opportunity to provide drinking water, sewage services (see Will the Waikawa Beach population grow in the next 20 years?) and a whole load of new housing areas around our village. These two schemes are inextricably linked.
Feedback closes at 5:00pm on Monday, 26 March 2018.
Council has been looking at how it can plan to provide enough land for future growth while maintaining Horowhenua’s unique character and protecting our environment.
We’ve created the Draft Horowhenua Growth Strategy 2040 …
We anticipate that over the next twenty years an additional 5,138 new houses will be required, that 3,000 additional jobs will be created in the District and 10,063 people will move here — that’s a 33% increase on our current population. …
Note: the existing Waikawa Beach village is shaded in bright yellow on the Council’s map. Harder to see are the pale yellow crosshatched areas directly around the village. Even harder to see was the blue outlined area between Walkers Lane and Strathnaver Drive and north of Waikawa Beach Road. To help you see them I’ve added blue shading. Note too that the area of farmland between the two blue shaded areas is currently on the market and advertised as being able to be subdivided:
About this property: 51.8HA (approx 125acres) in 26 paddocks, excellent artesian water … Good elevated housesites, subdividable. An attractive farm in a superb climate and location.Walk to Waikawa Beach. RV $1,546,000. To be sold by PUBLIC TENDER, closing 11am WEDNESDAY 14th MARCH 2018
Locals will know of many problems with some or all of these pieces of land: flooding and ponding, for example. The area by Strathnaver Drive is part of an official flight training area low-fly zone.
The important Council documents to read are available on their website and also from this site:
- Draft Horowhenua Growth Strategy 2040, 3 MB PDF.
- Potential Growth Area Option Map – Waikawa Beach 810 KB PDF.
Please add information and make comments below so we as a community can discuss these plans, and make sure to send your feedback directly to the Council too.
Yet again I find myself coming back to the question of increasing population in parts of Horowhenua which are in the tsunami zone, costly to provide infrastructure for, susceptible to flooding. What is the possible wisdom of this? Are any of our councillors also building developers? I lived in Queenstown when development went crazy. Local residents voted no to casinos in a referendum, and were overruled by councillors with vested interests. Development was under-regulated. Rates for full-time residents rocketed to cover for growth that only benefited the developers. The development did not help solve the problems with worker accommodation , it was for wealthy offshore owners. Please God, not for our coastal communities. I shall be making a submission to Council. I am sad all this has come to bear just as we thought we had found our happy place.