Northland coastal erosion: Teal Bay residents want action

Teal Bay community leader Lesley Adcock at the bay's recreation reserve where its foreshore is receding apace. Photo / Susan Botting

A coastal Whangārei community is calling for urgent council support to fight worsening beachfront erosion.

Teal Bay Ratepayers and Residents' Association president Lesley Adcock said financial and planning support for erosion mitigation work at the beach was urgently needed.

"We have some serious coastal erosion issues at Teal Bay, which are getting rapidly worse," Adcock said.

She said parts of the Teal Bay foreshore had eroded as much as a metre in the last year.
The situation was getting worse, amplifying each time a severe weather event coincided with unusually high tides.

Teal Bay on Northland's east coast. Photo / Susan Botting

Teal Bay's foreshore is Whangārei District Council (WDC) land, with a northern-end recreation reserve where impacts are particularly noticeable.

"The recreation reserve is widely used by the local community and by day visitors for boat launching and as a base for family beach days," Adcock said.

She said immediate mitigation such as shifting sand to eroded areas and dune planting was required.

Adcock said the association was seeking financial support for the resource consents required from WDC and Northland Regional Council (NRC) to do the erosion mitigation work.

"It is clear that there are some measures we can take to mitigate this erosion, but to do so we require consents and assistance from both WDC and NRC," Adcock told WDC's 2022-2023 annual plan submissions hearing earlier this month.

"We request that WDC includes in its annual plan for 2022-2023 funding to cover costs associated with resource consents, sand relocation, dune restoration and dune vegetation to mitigate the effects of coastal erosion at Teal Bay."

Teal Bay recreation reserve, challenged by coastal erosion. Photo / Susan Botting

Adcock said the association had already had preliminary discussions with NRC and WDC.

It was awaiting the outcome of a WDC-commissioned coastal process expert report advising on the Teal Bay situation. This had been produced to advise WDC on the next steps.

Adcock said financial support was needed for whatever was indicated as the best beach erosion mitigation. This support would go towards the cost of resource consenting and work such as potential sand shifting. She said repair work needed on erosion mitigation work begun in 2013.

Teal Bay is an East Coast location about 45km north-east of Whangārei, with under 90 baches and/or homes. About 20 of these front onto the council-owned strip of land along the beach foreshore.

Previous coastal erosion work in need of repair at Teal Bay. Photo / Susan Botting

The NRC hazard maps will be further built as new information such as this month's national sea level rise figures come to light. The NZ Sea Rise mapping searise.takiwa.co/map/6233f47872b8190018373db9/embed provides further details for almost all of New Zealand's coast.

The Teal Bay situation is not unique. Beach erosion has also become an ongoing issue at Matapōuri Beach, further down the coast.

This has already resulted in WDC in 2021 shifting 15,000 cubic metres of sand from Matapōuri estuary at the beach's southern end to the main beach, to protect public and private property against coastal erosion.

NRC independent commissioners in 2019 granted WDC a 20-year resource consent for Matapōuri Beach replenishment work. WDC took sand that had become trapped in the estuary back to the beach, copying the estuary's natural sand flushing process.

Matapōuri Bay, 35km north-east of Whangārei, is another Northland coastal community at risk from beach erosion. Photo / Susan Botting

WDC said coastal sand movement had always taken place at Matapōuri. Development had changed how this happened. Before development, there had been a natural equilibrium between the estuary and the beach. Storms and floods would flush sand out of the estuary. It would settle along the shores of the bay.

Bridges built over the estuary's two main feeder streams had reduced its sand flushing. That meant less sand was flushed out of the estuary and eventually onto the beach. The estuary started clogging up with sand as a result, in turn meaning the area of high tide beach got smaller.

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