Pea gravel v the sea: Westshore homeowners say their protection from the ocean isn’t winning the fight

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is sticking with a pea gravel wall to protect Westshore residents from seawater flooding for now, despite it being breached at least three times in recent months.

The council says it is “assessing its options” for the future of protection at Westshore, but hard answers are not coming quickly enough for residents.

The bottom end of North Terrace in Westshore, Napier, was under half a metre of sea water on Monday morning as high tide brought swelling waves for the second time in two weeks.

The swell had already breached the Westshore embankment after seas from a northeasterly broke through the protective bund on the beachfront only a fortnight before that.

A Hawke’s Bay Regional Council spokesman said the HBRC Works Group helped put sandbags around the affected private property and the council had arranged a contractor to work on rebuilding the seawall starting this week.

The Westshore Coastal Protection area is made up of a 500-metre-long “sacrificial” seawall made from pea gravel.

“After Cyclone Gabrielle, the council carried out some temporary repair work on the Westshore coastal protection area,” the spokesman said.

Seawater overtopped a bund made from pea gravel at Westshore on Monday, endangering property. Photo / Paul Taylor

“The recent swells on 8/9 July caused further damage even though it didn’t reach warning levels for the Westshore area. Higher swells and a super high tide meant the wall was overtopped and further eroded.”

The spokesman said the repair, using 10,000 cubic metres of pea gravel, will likely take five weeks if the weather holds and there is no notable swell for the next seven days.

The decision to continue using pea gravel has been met with criticism from residents.

Geoffrey and Brenda Clark told regional council staff and a Napier City councillor through email that the damaged bund required immediate attention only a week before seawater lapped at their property again.

They had already been provided with some sandbags for their property, but the protection they offered was lacking.

“The waves this time and last time came surging across the false lagoon and knocked the sandbags over so the water could surge into the property,” Geoffrey said on Monday.

He said it was a waste of ratepayers’ money to maintain protection with pea gravel because it did not do the job.

“They spend money each year to maintain the bund. They don’t spend more so they don’t have to do it again, they just keep doing the same thing each year with cheap material that is highly mobile.”

Their property was deemed Category One after Cyclone Gabrielle, meaning it was safe to rebuild with no intervention, but the recent flooding has Brenda questioning that decision.

“It appears to me we should have been Category Two [intervention required to manage future severe weather risk],” she said.

In a comment responding to public concerns on Facebook, a Hawke’s Bay Regional Council spokesperson conceded that pea gravel washes away over time.

“We are reassessing if this is the best approach to take in this area,” the comment read.

The regional council spokesman left plans for the protection of Westshore ambiguous.

“Our strategy for Westshore was replenishment historically and may or may not be the same in the future as it is under review.”

Larry Dallimore, former Napier City councillor and environmental advocate, agrees that the pea gravel does not offer any protection for residents.

“The only way to protect that area, in the absence of sand, is a rock wall,” Dallimore said.

Before a rock wall, however, he believes more should be done first to replace the supply of sand to address the nearshore sediment deficit contributing to coastal erosion at Westshore, which in turn would provide more protection to homes from swells.

James Pocock joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2021 and writes breaking news and features, with a focus on environment, local government and post-cyclone issues in the region. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives in Napier. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz