Council gives Haumoana family 30 days to remove seawall

Haumoana residents Mark Lawrence and his partner Tracey Oliver have been told by the Hastings District Council they must remove the small seawall protecting their home and essentially give in to the sea.

Official documents giving them 30 days to remove the wall were delivered this week (Tuesday) by two representatives of the Hastings District Council.

Without the wall Mr Lawrence says the storms a fortnight ago would have inundated his family home and he fears that if he complies with council edict the next high sea will wash through his property, making it uninhabitable.

Mr Lawrence says he began rebuilding the failing block wall in front of his Clifton Rd waterfront home in November last year, after high seas began to seriously erode it.

He admits he didn’t have resource consent to rebuild what he considered was an existing but damaged structure believing it was essential to protect his family, including his son Jackson who was 8-months old at the time.

He was immediately approached by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, concerned that he did not have resource consent. They advised him to ensure the structure was safe and to clean up all the rubble on the beach and to apply for retrospective consent to try and make it legal.

Attempts to comply ignored

Mr Lawrence tidied up much of the unsightly and unsafe wreckage from past storms along the beachfront and began to fill in the resource consent forms. This required him to state whether any other regulatory bodies needed to provide permits and so he made an application to Hastings District Council for building consent.

He’s been in negotiation with both councils, and even employed a planner and a coastal engineer. Then just as he thought he was making some progress he got a knock on the door and was served a ‘notice to fix’ under the Building Act and an Abatement notice under the Resource Management Act.

The Hastings District Council documents state that if the wall at his property at 23 Clifton Rd is not gone within 30 days, he’s liable to a fine of up to $200,000 and a further fine of up to $20,000 for each day after the deadline.

While Mr Lawrence can appeal against the decision while that appeal is being processes he is still required to comply with the removal notice or face the legal and financial consequences.

Mr Lawrence says council officers told him they had heard that he was continuing to work on his seawall and had received a complaint the day previously, despite not having done any work on the wall for over two months.

Hastings District Council says the wall and any debris related to its removal must to be taken to a location approved of by its Resource Management Group Manager Mike McGuire.

Coastal seawall plan

In informal discussions he had heard the Hastings District Council was planning to make an example of him. Now he believes the timing of their actions may be designed to prevent the Walking on Water (WOW) group going ahead with a community supported plan for a walkway and seawall to protect his home and 20 others currently under threat from erosion.

In the meantime Mr Lawrence will continue preparing his resource management application to Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and wants the council to hold off on any action until after August.

The council’s report from Tonkin & Taylor claims the impact of his small sea wall is detrimental to surrounding properties but Mr Lawrence is challenging this.

He says the real impact would be evident if he had to remove his wall and the ocean was allowed to scour out his foundations and pull his house down onto the beach, as has happened to 9 Clifton Rd over the past 18 months.

Mr Lawrence remains confident he can get a resource consent, because he believes everything he has done is up to compliance requirements for a retrospective building permit. Once that’s achieved he can move on to the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council for resource consent.

Basically he says both councils want the same issues dealt with but the HDC has jumped the gun. He says it’s ludicrous to ask him to remove the wall while every attempt is being made to comply.

WOW wants action dropped

The WOW group, representing the Haumoana, Te Awanga and Clifton communities, wants to know why if the wall is complaint, why Hastings District can’t support his application for a Hawke’s Bay Regional Council resource consent. At the very least the group wants a stay on any legal action until Mr Lawrence can get the necessary engineers reports to support his application.

WOW has already made written and verbal submissions to both councils and to a public meeting at Haumoana on June 29, rejecting their proposal for 13 groynes at $18 million, 90 percent charged back to the local community. It has also rejected the ‘managed retreat’ of at least 60 homes along the coastline.

The WOW alternative is that both councils move with urgency to remove all obstacles to a sea wall walkway around the 21 at-risk houses on the East Rd/Clifton Rd corner and to place five groynes between that corner and the existing groyne at the Tukituki river mouth to help protect and rebuild the beaches.

The group simply wants to councils to support the alternative project and absorb the resource consent costs so work can begin as soon as possible.

“We wouldn’t be putting in so much volunteer time, and investing in coastal engineering and consultants advice if we didn’t believe we could find the money to ensure this can be done with minimum cost to the local community,” saws WOW spokesperson Keith Newman

The Cape Coast is a Hawke’s Bay asset that has been neglected far too long. “It’s all well and good for the councils to boast about the wineries, the golf course, the arts and crafts and the world famous gannet viewing but all of that is at risk if the ocean keeps coming and nothing is done.”

Already, says Newman, the Cape Coast economy is going to be hugely impacted because the road to the Clifton Motorcamp is now unusable, and with it access to the gannets has been severely limited.

“Add to that the fact that 200 members of the Clifton Marine Club can no longer get to their recently renovated premises and that’s about 500 people who come here for holidays, tourism and recreation who are directly impacted.”

The WOW group believes the Resource Management Act is being severely misused, when it piles on the bureaucracy and compliance costs preventing people from protecting their private property and penalising them when they do.

“Basically the council’s are afraid someone’s going to sue them if they move ahead with hard engineering and something goes wrong. They’re reluctant to do anything because no-one wants to take responsibility, even for decisions that might protect, transform and make this area something we can all be proud of rather than the demolition zone its becoming,” says Newman

ends

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