By BRONWYN SELL and PAUL YANDALL
WHITIANGA - Whitianga residents who have been fighting to keep the sea out this week should get a chance to clean up their battered properties as tides ease.
The highest tide in a wet week came on Wednesday night and kept some up late, sandbagging their already eroded land.
A newly erected seawall saved a 200m stretch of beachfront property from erosion.
But some locals who had lobbied Environment Waikato to make it longer were angry that land either side of it had eroded.
The owner of the Mercury Bay Beachfront Resort, Max Booker, said sandbags and boulders had kept water out of houses along the Buffalo Beach waterfront, but some water made its way onto lawns and the high tides had left their mark in erosion and debris.
Hugh Keane, of the regional council, said the wall was completed two weeks ago - just in time for the seasonal high tides -at the maximum length allowed under the coastal plan.
A longer wall would have required public consultation and approval from the Minister of Conservation and would not have been completed in time to prevent flooding.
The Thames Coromandel District Council civil defence manager, Ron White, said the high tides must have brought heartbreak to the residents. "Some of these people have been awake such horrendous hours."
The king tides that have plagued Buffalo Beach should subside as the new-moon phase comes to an end, says MetService weather ambassador Bob McDavitt.
He said the combination of a spring tide with the new moon and a perigean tide, which occurs when the moon is closest to the Earth, had created king tides, which come once every six months.
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