Late last year Tonkin and Taylor came to Waikawa Beach to look at our river mouth and nearby coast. See Coastal study planned for late 2018. The other day we received an update on that report. It seems their findings should be available in the next few weeks:
Friday, 01 February 2019
HDC & HRC have received a draft report from Tonkin and Taylor regarding the River Mouth Report. Tonkin & Taylor subsequently provided an initial briefing in respect of its report. HRC and HDC have asked for some areas of clarification and as you might expect are awaiting that feedback. In terms of the ongoing project HRC will be the lead agency. HDC will of course support.
The intention will be that a summary report is developed for distribution to the Residents Association. If more detail is required I further understand the final report will be available.
Unfortunately, I am not too sure when the summary and final report will be available as both will need to go through HRC internal verification and processes. However, I understand it should be available in February/early March.
Thanks a lot,
Arthur Nelson
Property and Parks Manager • Tumu Rawa, Papa Rēhia
Meanwhile Tonkin and Taylor have been busy at the national level, as this item at Stuff reveals:
For the first time, environment and engineering researchers have calculated the cost of replacing pipes, roads and buildings destroyed by sea-level rise.
The data is included in a new Local Government New Zealand report which spells out a dire warning about the country’s ability to fund repairs. …
They considered four scenarios: 0.5 metres of sea level rise, 1m, 1.5m and 3m. NASA scientists predict a rise of between 30cm and 1.3m by 2100. NIWA estimates between 40 centimetres and roughly 1 metre.
Here at Waikawa Beach we don’t have a lot of publicly owned infrastucture. I guess our footbridge, toilet block and local roads could be at risk. Private property though is at risk from sea-level rise.
If we look at the interactive map at Before the Flood, we can see that a temperature rise of 0.5C would suggest a sea-level rise of 0.7 metre. The properties at the west end of Manga Pirau Street would suffer in this scenario. At 1.5C of warming the sea-level rise would be almost 3 metres, which would lead to problems at Hank Edwards Reserve and some properties along Reay Mackay Grove.
