Transport Minister David Parker is expecting a briefing shortly on a landslide that threatens the new $880 million Ara-Tūhono Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway north of Auckland.
The Auckland Anniversary floods have reactivated a landslide on the motorway that was only opened to motorists last month.
“This could potentially be a safety risk for motorists,” Parker said.
Asked if he could give motorists assurances they could drive on the motorway safely right now, Parker said if the road was not safe to drive on, the transport authorities would have closed it.
A spokesman for the minister said Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency is supplying a written briefing “ASAP”.
Cracks have now appeared in concrete barriers, and an entire section may be moving under the Pūhoi-to-Warkworth motorway.
Rodney Local Board chairman Brent Bailey today said the landslide was a concern but it didn’t surprise him, given the amount of rainfall and saturation in the sprawling rural ward.
He was pleased Waka Kotahi was taking steps to address the landslide, saying “everything man can build, they can build a second time”.
Bailey expected the issue would come at the monthly Rodney Board meeting tomorrow.
In a statement issued late this afternoon, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency group general manager transport services Brett Gliddon said significant work has been done on a long-term design solution for the slip at the northern end of the 18.5km motorway and is expected to be completed by October.
“In the interim, while works at this location are ongoing, concrete barriers are in place and a temporary traffic management plan has been instituted. These measures are in place to provide added assurance that these works will not pose any risk to people using the motorway,” he said.
Since the motorway opened on June 19 and until work is completed on the landslide, there is a 70km/h speed limit through a short section of the motorway around the landslide.
Gliddon said the road had been built through an area with challenging geology, and had a history of slips and land movements, which meant it had been designed and built taking these issues into account. It was also the reason detailed reports had been commissioned to identify potential risks, he said.
Waka Kotahi said the unstable material at the face of the slope of the landslide has been removed and replaced with engineered material and drainage, subject to stringent and detailed design, engineering, and approval processes.
The landslide comes as documents have surfaced showing Waka Kotahi has known for years the land in the area is unstable but thought the motorway would bypass it.
Instead, till-now undisclosed reports reveal the entire 18.5km-long project was beset by landslides for years, and the recent storms have made it worse, especially at one spot - an unstable slope above a stretch of about 200m of motorway by Mahurangi Bridge, near Warkworth.
It appeared “a pre-historical and deep-seated landslide has been reactivated” by January’s massive rainfall, said a report released to RNZ on Monday under the Official Information Act (OIA).
The “slope has experienced another landslide and is moving towards the carriageway” at a stop-start rate of sometimes more than 30cm a week, the 20-page external engineer’s report to the agency said.
“Cracks have been reported in concrete barriers in two separate places on the western side of the carriageway.
“There is the potential that some landslide movement is occurring across the full width of the carriageway.”
This - and a second, 300-page report that revealed a risk from rockfalls - had forced emergency repairs at a road touted at its June opening by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins (from under a large umbrella) as a key to unlock the north, and by Waka Kotahi as a “safer, more resilient and reliable route”.
Hipkins did not know at the time, but Waka Kotahi did, that already a large slope had begun sliding down toward the motorway at an average five to 11cm a week.
A noticeable bulge had developed at the toe of the slip at Mahurangi Bridge and the road’s shoulder had been damaged, in just the few weeks between the floods and the April 4 report. The road surface might be forced upward, it said.
The 300-page report suggested the motorway’s design was not up to scratch, as it was meant to last 100 years.
“It would be unreasonable for [builders] NX2 and the Independent Reviewer to state that the... cut slope and associated geotechnical elements have satisfied the design life requirements.”
The second, 300-page investigation in April, also newly-released under the OIA, said the motorway construction project had been dealing with 19 landslides by late 2019.
“Slope failures continued to occur into late 2022, some of which are either under repair, or remedial work designs are yet to be confirmed,” it said.
RNZ earlier reported that a 2020 resilience assessment for Waka Kotahi had said the land in the vicinity was “constantly moving but P2W [Pūhoi to Warkworth] will bypass”.
The assessment criticised the agency for “disjointed and reactive decision-making” that did not do enough to factor in climate change and resilience at many transport projects. This had led to “suboptimal and inefficient investment choices
The 20-page report on the slip near Mahurangi Bridge identified “moderate risk” to the motorway width, and “high risk” to the cut slope and motorway shoulder that “is unacceptable without treatment”.
“A quantitative risk assessment of the risk to persons [loss of life] has not been carried out,” it said.
It was unlikely to fail rapidly, but “slow-moving landslides can cause high levels of financial loss, reputational damage and, in some cases, loss of life if not monitored closely”.
“Unless stabilised, there remains uncertainty and a risk of the landslide movement accelerating or becoming more significant, especially if more extreme rainfall events are experienced,” said the report by authors, GHD and Jacobs.
They told Waka Kotahi they needed to find out a lot more about the landslide from the construction consortium, NX2.
In March, Waka Kotahi told the Herald the stormwater system for the motorway is designed to manage a 100-year storm event, the recent rainfall events had been a good test of the stormwater system, and it performed well.
A second slope, 30m long by 4m wide, had also been cut too steep, and landslips hit this section during heavy rain in July 2022 and January 2023. The cut had to be flattened out, the transport agency said.
Waka Kotahi said an independent reviewer, Aurecon, who has been appointed to ensure more than 100 safety and quality tests are met, has been monitoring the movement of the cut slope and this element of the project will not be certified until the slope has been stabilised.
The Pūhoi landslide reveal came at the same time the National Party was pledging to spend $500m over three years fixing potholes, by taking money away from speed-reduction initiatives, like median barriers.
Along the motorway, independent risk assessments done for NX2 of 98 cuts through slopes scored them all at moderate risk or lower; most were at very low risk (51 of them).
But some were getting worse as water built up, and it was not certain the fixes would work, said the report.
“There could be a perceived optimistic assurance that these cut slopes have no future risk of landslides.
“Geology and ground conditions are not fully understood and the design solution may not be suitable at the cut slope” at some cuts, it said.
It identified four “high-risk” locations for rockfall, and these were fixed.
Waka Kotahi told RNZ the landslide remedial work would undergo an independent review, certification and testing.
A few other localised cuts were marginally steeper than they should be, such as where natural features were incorporated, but they had all been assessed as okay, it said.
After RNZ reported in May about the 2020 resilience report that found more than 350 risks to the national roading network, the Minister of Transport Michael Wood said some roads may need to be abandoned as a result of climate change.
- Additional reporting RNZ
The woman was shaken by the incident.