Kaipara District Council warned of legal action over climate move

Ruawai College is among $600 million of assets at risk if Ruawai's community climate adaptation pilot doesn't go ahead. Photo / Susan Botting

Canning Kaipara’s landmark Ruawai community climate adaptation pilot would put lives at risk, expose $600 million of assets and open the council to a legal challenge.

That’s the warning in a staff report from Kaipara District Council general manager transformation and engagement Michael Day.

Ruawai district residents are about halfway through a trial programme to jointly decide how they will respond to the risk of a climate change-induced sea-level rise.

Day’s seven-page report on ending such work has been prepared for Wednesday’s Kaipara District Council meeting in Dargaville.

The document will form the foundation of debate as council politicians consider anew the future of the pilot, after effectively binning it at their last meeting, in October.

Day said ending the pilot without public consultation or amending the long-term plan was a legal risk.

“Staff have obtained legal advice on ‘potential legal risk arising from decision to cancel Ruawai Adaptive Pathways’,” he claimed in his report.

“This has outlined that there is currently a ‘heightened risk’ of challenge to council decision-making on climate change-related matters.”

A five-page legal opinion from district council legal adviser Simpson Grierson’s senior associate, Warren Bangma, is also included in the agenda.

The Ruawai pilot area’s $600 million of at-risk assets include more than $467 million in buildings for homes and businesses, more than $97 million in roading, $18.3 million in kumara farming land, $13.7 million in community assets, and more than $2 million in critical lifelines infrastructure, Day said.

Day’s staff recommendation to Wednesday’s meeting is that councillors rescind the October decision and continue with the pilot for the remaining eight months of the financial year.

He suggests the council should formally support the Ruawai pilot’s key next step, to parcel up Ruawai, Raupo, Naumai and Te Kowhai into smaller areas for more-localised, tailored responses.

Former Kaipara deputy mayor Anna Curnow hopes councillors will make a “sensible decision”. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Former Kaipara deputy mayor Ruawai’s Anna Curnow said in light of the staff report, she hoped councillors at Wednesday’s meeting would make a “sensible decision”.

Curnow will take the voices of over 800 people who have signed her “Save Kaipara district’s climate adaptation programme” petition with her to the meeting as she fights to keep the community pilot.

The Ruawai pilot started in December 2021 after the location being jointly chosen by KDC and Far North and Whangārei district councils and Northland Regional Council. Curnow co-chairs the pilot’s 24-member community panel.

Kaipara district councillors will be deciding on the future of Ruawai's climate change adaptation pilot. Back row from left: Rachael Williams, Gordon Lambeth, Jonathan Larsen (deputy mayor), Mike Howard, Eryn Wilson-Collins, and Mark Vincent. Front: Ron Manderson, Craig Jepson (mayor), Pera Paniora, and Ash Nayaar. Photo / Susan Botting

In favour of stopping the work is Kaipara District Mayor Craig Jepson.

He says his district does not need a climate adaptation budget and that money should go into Ruawai’s $18 million Raupō drainage scheme.

Jepson said in an interview with Local Democracy Reporting Northland he was not a climate change denier.

Raupō drainage committee chairman Ian Beattie said his group would welcome the money, if the council decided on that at its Wednesday meeting.

The drainage scheme will soon start work on its biggest development work in three decades. This includes a $4.6 million floodgate to be installed across the at least 7m-wide mouth of the scheme’s key 19km G canal. At present the canal is open to the Kaipara Harbour.

Day said just over half of KDC’s allocated $148,000 2023-24 budget had been spent, leaving $71,000 remaining.

■ Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air