Huapai resident Steph Deacon cannot fathom how the council could approve plans for seven townhouses on a property flooded in 2023. Photo / Michael Craig
Severe thunderstorms, followed by torrential flooding, forced Steph and Brendon Deacon to abandon their home, grab their two young children, and kayak to safety in the middle of the night when the Kumeū River overflowed onto their Huapai property in 2021.
They were better prepared for the January 2023 flood on the night of the abandoned Elton John concert, but it was a terrifying experience for a tenant two doors down at 25 Pinotage Place, who moved out not long after.
Auckland Council is now considering a resource consent application for seven townhouses at 25 Pinotage Place, having approved about 4000 new builds in hazard zones since the devastating floods of 2023.
Since the 2023 floods, the council said 13.6% of all building consents issued touched a natural hazard, such as flooding, erosion, subsidence, or slippage. The hazard zones are generally referred to as floodplains.
The areas with the most building consents in hazard areas are Māngere-Ōtāhuhu, Hibiscus and Bays, and Upper Harbour Local Board areas.
Steph Deacon said the plans for seven townhouses were ridiculous after heavy rains this week saw the Kumeū River rise to a lake only metres away from her nearby home in a cul-de-sac, where many Category 3 homes have been bought by the council and removed.
“The fact that the council is even entertaining it by not saying outright ‘no’ just blows my mind,” said Deacon.
“If something happened and the new residents needed to evacuate, whether it’s a medical emergency or something else, they would be unable to. It would be disastrous,” said Deacon.
Jen Mein, treasurer of the Kumeū-Huapai Residents & Ratepayers Association, said her cousin lived at 25 Pinotage Place. She provided the Herald with a video her cousin took on the day of the January 2023 floods.
The video shows a torrent of floodwater nearly at deck level, a car partially under water, debris and flooding on neighbouring properties.
“It is ludicrous to think anyone would want to put a development there,” said Mein.
The residents and ratepayers group and the Rodney Local Board are opposed to the planned development.
“It is deeply troubling to put houses on a known floodplain where the water can be up to 2m high after heavy rain,” said Local Board member Guy Wishart, who lost his Kumeū home to the 2023 floods and moved to Helensville.
Auckland Council senior planners Megan Tyler and John Duiguid said consent processes for new builds in floodplains have been tightened since the 2023 severe weather events.
However, the Unitary Plan - the council’s current planning blueprint - does not allow for “downzoning” which adds restrictions, only for upzoning, which removes them.
The council wants to downzone parts of the city that are prone to flooding and other natural hazards, and is waiting for a law change agreed to between the council and the Government to bring in new planning rules to deal with new builds in hazard zones, said Tyler.
Duguid said that building or subdividing land in hazard zones requires a resource consent, generally with strict conditions to help protect the property and surrounding properties from flooding.
“For example, you may be required to keep a minimum floor level or ensure fencing allows for the free flow of water,” he said.
At a recent council meeting, Howick councillor Maurice Williamson said he had seen the “poor sods” building and buying properties on floodplains cry when shown photos of flooding after a rain storm.
“I just think we have a moral obligation as a council to say ‘take action now’, stop those consents when we know they are in a place of serious problems.
“We should get legal advice as to whether we can take unilateral action to immediately put in place a stop (to consenting building on floodplains)...and not be bound by what the law says.
“I would love to be in court arguing with someone who says ‘you stopped me getting a building consent’ when I say ‘we know you are building in a place that will flood even in modest rainfall’,” said Williamson.
Tyler said, “I share your frustration”, but told Williamson the council was unable to make changes until the Government changed the law.
A spokesperson for Resource Management Act Reform Minister Chris Bishop said the law change is expected to become law in the next couple of months.
John Tookey, a professor of construction management at AUT, has called for a realistic and pragmatic solution to building on floodplains.
He said the original flood zones and GIS mapping of the zones are based on previous planning and do not necessarily take into account more significant stormwater generated by new developments.
“When we are talking about 100-year events that are turning up every two or three years, it becomes factitious as a proposition.”
Asked about the 4000 new builds on floodplains/hazard zones, Tookey described the situation as “a can of worms”.
“There is a council component associated with this because they are providing the consent. The last fingerprints are of the council and the planning department of the council.
“Inevitably, you are going to end up with legal cases where you have people who have a flooded property, saying to themselves, hang on a minute, these buggers signed off on this and said it was fine to build here.”
Tookey said that at least the council needs to put a caveat on new builds.
Duguid said the council takes steps to inform applicants and avoid potential legal action, including formally recording a covenant on a property’s title, and the need for a building consent.
“This may also come with strict conditions to control flooding impacts and is recorded on the property’s title – it is called a Section 73 certificate. It’s important to look out for this if you’re buying a property,” he said.
Once the law changes were made, he said, the council would strengthen planning rules, so over time new homes became more resilient to flooding, landslides and other natural hazards.
Developers would have to meet stronger rules when proposing to build in areas with a risk of hazards and the council would consider whether land zoning in some areas needed to change, said Duguid.
Lyall Carter, chairman of West Auckland is Flooding(WAIF), said the council and the Government needed to work on changing the law with urgency, saying a survey by WAIF found most people affected by the floods were first-home buyers.
“We know that floodplains are going to flood.
“There needs to be more awareness raised, particularly for young people and first-home buyers desperate to get into the market, desperate to fulfil the Kiwi dream for themselves. They are ambitious young people, and we need to have an open, honest conversation about the dangers of floodplains,” Carter said.
Back at 25 Pinotage Place, the council is processing the resource consent application from Kiefer Ltd, whose directors are Karanvir Sawhney and Navpreet Singh.
Documents lodged as part of the application said the flood hazard risk had been assessed by engineers, who said the site was unsafe for vehicles and vulnerable people.
Therefore, each home has been designed for two-storey living areas raised above a 100-year flood level with a 500m waterboard between the waterline and the deck for a safe refuge during flooding.
The living areas are built above a carport at ground level.
“It is believed that weather warnings provide ample warning for cars to be relocated further up Pinotage Place when flooding is forecast.
“In the event of a flood, access to and from the site would be unsafe for children and elderly for an estimated 10 hours until the flood depth drops below 0.5m. This is not considered to be an unreasonable length of time to remain at home in a 100-year future flood event.
“It is considered that the flooding associated with the proposal will have less than minor effects,” the application said.
The Herald sought comment from Kiefer Ltd. A contact for the company on the application form, Teuta Kajazi, did not wish to comment, nor did anyone else from the company return messages over two days.
Steph Deacon said the developer plans to bring more than 400 cu m of earth onto the site to raise the 916 sq m section for a building platform.
“It is only going to push more water our way, and having more impervious surfaces will lead to more runoff.
“For the people who might end up living in those properties, we know from experience how awful it is to be surrounded by flood waters, and how absolutely terrifying it is,” she said.
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