Tim Foote and his partner have been hit with a $300,000 bill after two landslides on their Vogeltown property in Wellington. Photo / Supplied
Tim Foote and his partner have been hit with a $300,000 bill after two landslides on their Vogeltown property in Wellington. Photo / Supplied
A Wellington couple is likely in negative equity after a $300,000 bill to fix two slips on their property after the capital’s wettest winter.
Vogeltown resident Tim Foote told the city council’s Environment and Infrastructure Committee the slips made their land less safe for their toddler to play outside.
The first slip fell at the back of the property in February last year when Cyclone Dovi hit, Foote said.
“It came down behind the house like a freight train. I was home and it was quite shocking.”
The slip was around an 8m high bank behind the house that was cut out several decades ago, Foote said.
The second slip was at the front of the property during intense rain in June last year. The couple engaged engineers who began work but two months later the hill started to crack and their deck started moving.
The total repair bill is almost $300,000 of which EQC has paid $98,000, Foote said.
“So there’s a $200,0000 gap for us to cover. We’ve hit the ceiling of what the bank will loan us, our parents have thankfully stepped in to help us bridge the gap, but we’re probably well into negative equity now.”
One of the slips slid on to city council land and because the couple did not have an easement on the footpath, they potentially missed out on an extra $60,000 from EQC.
“It was a pretty hard year last year, personally I can speak to feeling really anxious,” Foote said.
Last year the council responded to 861 slip sites, including this one in Karori. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Last year’s slips cost Wellington City Council a record $1.8m to clear, and callouts tripled previous year.
The slips were driven by wet weather and modified slopes, which have been cut and filled to build roads and homes through Wellington’s hilly topography.
Last year 26 households were displaced by slips and 12 roads were closed. Four properties remain unoccupied due to dangerous building notices being issued.
The city council faces more and bigger slips as the impact of climate change starts to bite.
Environment and Infrastructure Committee chairwoman councillor Tamatha Paul said resilience to severe weather was at the top of the council’s list.
“Climate adaptation is just as important as climate mitigation, so we need to keep doing important projects like decarbonising our transport system so that the weather doesn’t get worse. It’s not too late to give up.”
Councillor Iona Pannett said bad planning decisions in the past have resulted in some houses almost falling off cliffs.
She encouraged people to get an engineer to assess any property they were considering buying if they could afford it.
Contractors used a digger to clear a slip blocking Main Road in Tawa last year. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Councillor Ben McNulty said while Wellington got off comparably lightly in relation to the devastation caused by the likes of Cyclone Gabrielle further north, the capital could not be complacent in its efforts to fight climate change.
“Nature is only just getting started.”
On average the council is forecast to spend $3.5m a year to build retaining walls over the next few years, but the recent slips have thrown a spanner in the works.
“To address the major slip sites as quickly as possible, there needs to be an uplift in budgets, resources and the ability to procure quickly,” council officials reported.
The council would effectively have to double its spending on retaining walls over two years to get all the work done.
However, council officials warned that even if this funding was approved, it would be an ambitious programme of work with the current squeeze on construction resources.
Officials will now review available budgets for resilience in time for the next long-term plan.
