The Front Page: Cyclone Gabrielle - The infrastructure flaws exposed in our major cities

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The furious storms over the summer have served to expose a number of weaknesses in the infrastructure of our major cities and towns.

Speaking to The Front Page podcast amid the onslaught of ex-cyclone Gabrielle on the North Island, NZ Herald science and environmental writer Jamie Morton says there are three key areas we need to focus on to prepare our cities for the future.

The first, he says, relates to the effectiveness of our stormwater systems.

“Our water network infrastructure is woefully unprepared for climate change,” Morton says.

“We’re having to look at making $120- to $180-billion worth of upgrades just to bring them up to scratch to deal with the pressure and demand that we’re going to get with increasing extreme rainfall events.”

This is a message that will resonate with the many North Islanders whose homes were flooded during the recent storms.

Morton adds that it isn’t only about building new infrastructure, but also choosing carefully what we take out of the natural environment.

“We remove wetlands and green spaces at our absolute peril,” he says.

“Rather than cut down trees that absorb lots of water, we need to be planting more of them - especially in places like central Auckland where we’ve lost a lot of our tree cover.”

This feeds into the debate of how you prepare your city to deal with the increased downpours that will inevitably result from the warming climate. The final recommendation that Morton makes is that we rethink some of the building choices we have made up until now.

“An estimated $150 billion worth of property [in New Zealand] is already at risk of flooding if we add together all of the public and private buildings considered at risk right now. The key takeaway from that is that we urgently need to stop building in risky areas.”

Morton says that one good thing about these storms is that they have already led to some productive conversations about the types of properties we’re consenting to and also how we’re going about expanding our cities.

The hope now is that once the inclement weather stops that these ideas are made concrete, with practical solutions that ensure New Zealanders are kept safer in the future.

Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear more on the science of ex-cyclone Gabrielle and the punch that it packed around the country.