Maungatapu slips: Homeowners’ three-year repair battle with Tauranga council

An aerial view of the slip in front of Brian and Melanie Gardner's Maungatapu Rd property. Photo / Tauranga City Council

Tauranga’s “forgotten five” are desperate for a solution three years after a huge slip forced them out of their homes and left them facing millions of dollars in repairs.

On July 29, 2022, a 10m-wide slip fell away from Brian and Melanie Gardner’s waterfront section on the Maungatapu peninsula.

Within a week, the slip had extended to neighbouring Maungatapu Rd properties and crept closer to the retired couple’s newly renovated home, leaving their deck floating in mid-air.

On August 7, they and two other couples were told to evacuate for their safety. None have been able to return home since.

The three properties were issued dangerous building notices and classed as unsafe to occupy by Tauranga City Council under the Building Act.

Another two homes were liveable, but the slip damaged the fronts of their properties, 20m above the Tauranga Harbour.

The homeowners have been asking the council for help to repair the slip, but the council had “completely absolved themselves of any responsibility”, Melanie Gardner told Local Democracy Reporting.

This is the first time they have spoken to media about their plight.

Melanie said they did not expect the council to pay for all the repairs, but hoped it would share the costs.

From their perspective, the council allowed homes to be built on an unstable cliff, did not decommission soak holes used for stormwater drainage across the suburb and contributed to the slip via a leaking water pipe.

“If you’ve had a hand in doing something, shouldn’t you have a hand in helping to repair it?”

Brian and Melanie Gardner. Photo / Alisha Evans

The council bought out other slip-damaged homes on the peninsula, but said the circumstances on Maungatapu Rd were different and it could not use ratepayer money to fix private development issues.

‘Forgotten five’

An ICE Geo and Civil engineering report prepared for the council said the Maungatapu Rd land failures were caused by high rainfall and possibly exacerbated by changes in development along the peninsula.

In 2022 the area received 126% of its average June rainfall and 195% for July.

Brian Gardner said he and his neighbours were the “forgotten five” because other unliveable slip-damaged homes on the Maungatapu Peninsula were paid out by the council.

Last year, the council offered to buy out homes in Egret Ave, on the other side of Maungatapu, that were damaged by large landslides in 2023. The Government funded half of the payouts through the Future of Severely Affected Locations (FOSAL) programme.

Brian and Melanie Gardner's deck is now floating in mid-air after a slip in July 2022. Photo / Alisha Evans

Melanie Gardner said they had tried every avenue they could think of to get a resolution but all were no-exits.

“It’s just so incredibly stressful. My life has just stopped. We’ve gone through hell and it’s still continuing.”

They spoke to MPs, approached the commission running the council when the slip happened and “held out” for the new council elected in July 2024.

Mayoral meeting

The owners met with council staff and new Mayor Mahé Drysdale in October to discuss sharing the repair cost.

Melanie said Drysdale told them he would present their case to the other councillors and respond in four weeks.

After an email chase-up he replied in December saying the council believed issues of damage or risk to private property should be raised with homeowners’ insurers and the Natural Hazards Commission.

Tauranga Mayor Mahé Drysdale. Photo / Alex Cairns

He initially declined an invitation to visit their homes.

“It is not tenable for council to help fund your repairs, and so I do not want to unfairly raise expectations by visiting,” his letter said.

He later offered to visit but said it would not alter the council’s position.

Three of the owners received money from the Natural Hazards Commission but not enough to fund slip repairs.

Their insurance covered the loss of items but not the damage to their land.

An initial estimate for the repairs was $3 million, Melanie said.

The ICE Geo and Civil report recommended repairing the slip damage as one project.

The five owners also spent thousands on individual geotechnical reports.

The 10m-wide slip took out most of Brian and Melanie Gardner's backyard. Photo / Supplied

‘Nightmare’ legacy

The worst-case scenario for the Gardners would be walking away from the home they bought for $1.95m and spent $250,000 renovating, Brian said.

“It’s a hell of a lot to walk away from.”

Melanie also didn’t want to leave the “nightmare” to their children when they died.

Next-door neighbours Angela and Peter Moore have been renting elsewhere since being evacuated.

“We just want to get on with our lives and we want a direction to go into or someone to help us.”

Angela said they were meant to be enjoying their home with their children and grandchildren.

“It’s just broken our hearts,” she said, holding back tears.

Paying rent while their property sat there doing nothing had been financially draining.

She loved gardening, but the slip took most of the garden and left a visible crack in the lawn.

The slip ended 9m from Neil McIntosh's Maungatapu Rd house. Photo / Alisha Evans

Neil McIntosh was able to stay in his home, but the slip ended about 9m from it.

It was nerve-racking living there because the slip could get worse, he said.

McIntosh said he invested in stormwater drainage to prevent water pooling on the lawn, which could erode the slip further.

The council’s position

Drysdale told Local Democracy Reporting the decision not to share repair costs was made by the council commission, and the advice he received was there was no basis for revisiting it.

“While this is devastating for the land owners and we have a lot of sympathy for their situation, council needs to consider the impact of decisions on ratepayers as a whole.”

It needed to decide whether it was appropriate for ratepayers to fund remediation of private land, which council policy did not provide for, he said.

The January 2023 landslide fell on a house and cars in Maungatapu. Photo / Andrew Warner

Council building services manager Steve Pearce said the FOSAL process only applied to Cyclone Hale, the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle.

The Maungatapu Rd properties were damaged before this, so were ineligible.,

The slip on Egret Ave came from a council reserve above and one home ended up on the council-owned road. Pearce said the council had different responsibilities as a landowner.

The Maungatapu Rd slips were on private properties and were not impacting or affected by public land, Pearce said.

“We can’t, in all good consciousness, use ratepayer funding to support private development issues.”

Pearce said the council monitored the properties and the slip’s progress regularly since it happened.

If the owners were to get engineering and geotechnical advice that their homes were safe to live in they could present this to council and move back in, he said.

Tauranga City Council corporate services general manager Alastair McNeil. Photo / Alex Cairns

Council corporate services general manager Alastair McNeil said Maungatapu had a history of land instability and slips around the coastal edge.

The council recommended homeowners did due diligence before buying a house which included getting a Land Information Memorandum (LIM) that said if natural hazard notations were on the title, he said.

In terms of the soak holes, council had no plans to retrofit the entire stormwater drainage infrastructure across the peninsula due to immense cost and complexity with no guarantee of addressing land instability.

Information provided by council said studies following landslides in 1979 and 1995 suggested a link between soak holes and increased landslide risk, but this relationship was not scientifically proven.

The council said it had no record of a water main leak on Maungatapu Rd in the week before the slip.

- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.