NZ towns could face relocation talks as severe weather becomes norm - The Front Page

The Waihopai and Wairau River confluence near Renwick after heavy rainfall in late June. Photo supplied by Marlborough District Council

New Zealand has seen plenty of severe weather in recent years, and it’s only a matter of decades until serious conversations need to be had about moving entire towns.

Stories about towns flooding when hit with heavy rainfall have become commonplace.

Just in the last month, towns like Nelson, Marlborough and Motueka have been devastated, while other areas like Taranaki have been badly affected as this type of rainfall becomes the norm.

We keep facing these issues and talking about how to fix them, but what are the long-term solutions?

Since 2023, Auckland Council has approved about 4000 new builds in hazard zones.

Since the Auckland Anniversary weekend 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.

University of Canterbury senior lecturer and chief technical officer at Urban Intelligence, Dr Tom Logan, told The Front Page he’s not surprised.

“Often councils find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place because they don’t always have the resources or the mandate to prevent that development,” he said.

Logan suggests we need to be much more proactive and question whether an area is ripe for development, or whether it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

“Ultimately, what we need to see around the country are risk assessments that are multi-aged to understand our risk from not just flooding, but also fire, landslides, even earthquakes and groundwater rise.

“Christchurch has just finished an adaptation plan for the Diamond Harbour area, and that’s probably the best example of that in the country, possibly worldwide. Equally, the Buller District Council has a plan to relocate the town of Westport. And that’s not saying ‘everyone pack your bags tomorrow’, but if there’s another major disaster, this is an option for us so that we’re not sitting ducks with no plan of action.

“But, it’s going to be a long process to talk to the communities and see what their preferences are. We saw in Japan that after the tsunamis, they relocated a lot of their coastal towns, but they did it in a top-down way, which meant that a lot of people just left.

“So now, they have all this infrastructure but no one stuck around to live there because they missed the step of actually asking residents what they wanted,” he said.

Logan said a key challenge is that while we’ve recognised that climate change exists, that hasn’t been embedded in design protocols or legislation.

“We can’t continue to design for the environment that we had 10, 20 or 50 years ago. As a result, our planning and the system set up by central government aren’t equipped, aren’t providing resources for, or even empowering local government to make the decisions that they need to be making,” he said.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about what kinds of long-term fixes are needed to prepare for a future impacted by a harsher climate.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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