New seawall is being built beneath these Shore homes. Photo / Auckland Council
New seawall is being built beneath these Shore homes. Photo / Auckland Council
A 51m-long seawall is being built at a North Shore beach after owners of two homes won planning commissioners’ consent to develop it to attempt to stabilise cliffs.
Allen and Barbara Peters are having the curved wall built beneath their two homes below Seacliff Ave.
Staff from Auckland Stonemasons havebeen using two trucks to take the run from their lay-down yard at Narrow Neck Beach car park to the site beneath the cliffs at St Leonards Beach, nearly 1km along the coast between Takapuna and Devonport.
The business has limited time to get materials to the site, only able to drive the course during extremely low tides this month and next month.
They are carting concrete, rocks and other materials to the site.
Point Wells resident and businessman Warwick Mortimer and neighbour and barrister Paul Dale KC own illegal seawalls on the Matakana coast which they have been asked to remove.
The two men said their walls and two neighbouring ones were built to stop flooding and erosion and all four owners have challenged council abatement notices in the Environment Court.
The council has issued them with notices to remove the walls, saying their construction and existence meant the loss of salt marsh vegetation and mangroves which buffer the shoreline and provide a habitat for native fauna and prevent any future naturalisation or restoration of the coastal edge.
No one can build any structure that is fixed in, on, under or above any foreshore or seabed and disturbing that including by excavating, drilling or tunnelling has an adverse effect on the foreshore or seabed, the council told the owners.
Pet dog Barnaby atop the seawall at Point Wells in front of Warwick Mortimer's place. Photo / Warwick Mortimer
Because the application was non-complying, it was publicly notified.
Independent hearing commissioners Peter Reaburn, Rebecca Skidmore and Nicki Williams decided to allow the scheme, supported by 12 parties. Nine parties opposed and one was neutral.
The Peters have employed contractors to build the rock masonry seawall with an inbuilt staircase along the coastal margin within the boundaries of their properties and adjoining them.
Allen Peters told the commissioners he and Barbara had lived at 66 Seacliffe Ave since buying it in 2007 and they bought the neighbouring place in 2015.
Plans for the seawall, now being built at a North Shore beach. Photo / Auckland Council
A previous owner of 66 Seacliffe Ave tried to build a substantial retaining wall of steel and concrete beams and columns from the Westfield freezing works, which was demolished last century.
The material was stacked at the top of the cliff at 68 Seacliffe Ave in an attempt to stabilise the land.
Around 1972, a storm caused a big slip. The seaward lawns of 66 and 68 Seacliffe Ave collapsed on to the foreshore below. A significant portion of the steel beams and concrete went with them.
Over the years, the Peters had witnessed the steel beams, concrete slabs and steel cables at the bottom of the cliff being increasingly strewn out across the foreshore as tidal forces hit those materials.
At the time of the hearing, Ruth Ell of Environment Takapuna opposed the wall. Erosion was happening along the coastline, she told commissioners, and landowners needed to accept that.
She was concerned the wall would encroach on public land for what, in her opinion, was for the applicants’ benefit only.
Nor did the council support wall construction. Staff told the commissioners that erosion processes were natural and should be allowed to continue.
Ngāti Manuhiri attended an onsite meeting with the Peters and raised no significant cultural issues or effects.
Work by Auckland Stonemasons is continuing at Belmont.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
