Last Sunday night coastal areas were hit with monster waves generated by a low pressure system hundreds of kilometers off shore. Te Awanga, Haumoana and Clifton, all part of the Hastings District were the most affected.
The Hawke's Bay coastline is built from shingle bought down by the various rivers and distributed along the foreshore by tides and waves. Every so often large swells arrive and this process is accelerated so what might seem like stable ground suddenly starts moving, sometimes being eroded, and some times being built up.
The problem is decades ago houses were built on the foreshore when the sea seemed not be be a problem, and now many are right on the edge of the beach having lost most of their frontage to previous storms.
Several batches and sheds have already been destroyed, and the process can expect to continue forever, unless or course we have another 1931 type tectonic event when perhaps the land might be lifted higher instead of dropping lower as happened last time.
Anyway people with houses in the area do what most of us would do in similar circumstances. They try to make their houses safe mostly by building protective walls.
In doing so they have come up against the policies of the Hastings District Council and the Hawke's Bay Regional Council both of whom seem to favor what is rather delightfully called a managed retreat, meaning abandoning their properties.
The Dutch might be interested in this ohilosophy.
Of course it's very easy to support such an idea when it is not your house being threatened.
The residents not unsurprisingly disagree.They want to build protective barriers. The Hastings District has ruled these structures require resource consents before work can even start. One local who had rebuilt a wall originally built by a previous owner, was recently taken to court and fined.
The locals also believe the solution is a series of groynes along the coastline. Of course ratepayers might no be so keep on paying for what some think is a battle that cannot be won. Some in the wider community believe those who choose to live by the sea cannot expect the wider community to pay for their protection.
The councils seem to agree yet this approach seems inconsistent with their decisions on other similar matters.
For over seventy years the Heretaunga plains have been protected by stockbanks or levees built during in the 1930's during the depression and unquestionably valuable farm and cropping land has been saved from inundation from foods, especially during Cyclone Bola in the late 1980,s when the water was within centimeters of coming over the top. In 1989 responsibility transferred to the Hawke's Bay Regional Council.
Another valuable asset protected with man made fortifications is the Port of Napier. Few if any would contest the value of the port to this area, but the massive concrete blocks, boulders and other engineering works are there to prevent the sea disrupting activities. As it happens the port is owned by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council.
Thirty years ago Westshore was a very pleasant beach. Not any more. Some claim port development has caused the erosion. The Regional Council seems to have accepted some responsibility and over recent years huge quantities of shingle have been trucked at great expense from Marine Parade to Westshore to replace material eroded from the beach.
Elsewhere retaining walls and other barriers to the elements are normal practice for protecting roads, airports, and just about anything else we consider valuable.
In just a few hours last Sunday night the the road to Clifton recently built to replace an earlier road was all but washed away again. How much did the new road cost, who paid, and what happened to the managed retreat policy?
One point that has become apparent from the latest assault, is that if the group of 21 houses at Haumoana disappear into the sea, the road to Te Awanga will be threatened. Protection might be cheaper than building a replacement for the several hundred homes that will be cut off, as a new road could involve the purchase of some rather pricey land financed by ratepayers.
As long as the residents are fighting the battle with their own money they may be doing the wider community a great service. It seems quite unreasonable to load individual citizens with monstrous consent costs when all they are trying to do is protect their houses with fortification built on their own land at their own expense.
For the moment council officers seem to be enforcing their entrenched views by placing every possible obstruction in the way of these people.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Local Government Emergency
Recently Regional Councillors Neil Kirton and Tim Gilbertson called for greater co operation between our five councils. This followed a Chamber of Commerce letter suggestion a referendum on amalgamation be held in conjunction with this years local Government elections. Something I have also been suggesting.
Apparently talks on greater co operation have been going on for 10 years or more but little progress has been made.
Just two days after the report an event occurred which to me highlighted the disjointed relationships between our local councils. I am talking of course about the Tsunami scare following a massive 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile.
A major natural disaster is always on the cards for Hawke's Bay. A couple of thousand years ago ( geologically only yesterday) a massive eruption where Lake Taupo now is, smothered Hawke's Bay with ash. It is at least the 4th time this has happened and it will likely happen again.
Seventy nine years ago we were hit by a major earthquake that all but destroyed both Napier and Hastings. It could and probably will happen again.
In the 1960's our coastline was battered by a Tsunami that originated of the coast of South America where the latest one started. There was some damage, no lives were lost, but it shows these events are not isolated.
I have had some encounters with Tsunami. In 1975 while working in the Solomon Islands I flew over an area not long after a massive Tsunami had hit the coast, traveling hundreds of meters inland and killing thousands of villagers. From the air it was just a dirty brown scar reaching from the sea but clearly on the ground it was total disaster.
One night a little later in Rabaul on the island of New Britain there was a large earthquake in the middle of the night. Next morning I was shown a serious of photographs on display in the foyer showing the result of a previous earthquake. A wall of water travelled across the harbour hitting the sea wall maybe 100 metres from the motel then continued across the grass and road until it hit the outer wall of the building where I had been sleeping. After smashing through the ground floor units it continued out the other side of the rooms perhaps a metre and a half deep. One astonishing shot showed a wall of brown water pouring into the swimming pool at one end while at the other end it was still calm and blue.
Of course these are just tiddlers. When the Indonesian volcano of Krakatoa exploded in the 1880's, a wall of water was so high it swept away people who had climbed a hill over 30 metres high for protection.
So what has all of this got to do with Hawke's Bay. Throughout the day of the Tsunami I received a constant bombardment of media releases updating me on the tsunami.
At least six bulletins came from the Regional Council, four from the Napier City Council and I assume more were put out by the Hastings District Council.
Three organisations were working to minimise the threat to the people of Hawke's Bay. In the field there seemed to be inconsistency. In Napier the market on Marine parade was in full swing, where as Haumoana and Te Awanga were both evacuated and Waimarama self evacuated. In Clive I heard a woman asking the Police why her area had not been evacuated. The police seemed to be operating under different instructions again.
I am not criticising those in the field. They were doing what seemed right, but it seemed to me the three organisations were unaware of each others actions. It was after all a single threat to the whole area.
Natural disasters are real threats to our safety. It is only a matter of time before the big one, what ever it is, hits Hawke's Bay. Parts of Napier including the airport are only a couple of meters above high tide. A three meter Tsunami on top of a king tide could well reach into the suburbs threatening lives.
We need one controlling civil defence authority possibly working under the control of full time emergency agencies of Fire, Ambulance, and Police. Fire in particular are probably the only organisation with the necessary skills and equipment to handle a major disaster.
Not only would there be a better co-ordinated response, presumably there would also be financial savings for ratepayers.
We should consider the Tsunami a dry run for the real thing. When the real thing does happen we must be prepared in the best way possible.
So if our councilors have any real intention of working in unison then a single emergency management organisation would be a good place to start.
Apparently talks on greater co operation have been going on for 10 years or more but little progress has been made.
Just two days after the report an event occurred which to me highlighted the disjointed relationships between our local councils. I am talking of course about the Tsunami scare following a massive 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile.
A major natural disaster is always on the cards for Hawke's Bay. A couple of thousand years ago ( geologically only yesterday) a massive eruption where Lake Taupo now is, smothered Hawke's Bay with ash. It is at least the 4th time this has happened and it will likely happen again.
Seventy nine years ago we were hit by a major earthquake that all but destroyed both Napier and Hastings. It could and probably will happen again.
In the 1960's our coastline was battered by a Tsunami that originated of the coast of South America where the latest one started. There was some damage, no lives were lost, but it shows these events are not isolated.
I have had some encounters with Tsunami. In 1975 while working in the Solomon Islands I flew over an area not long after a massive Tsunami had hit the coast, traveling hundreds of meters inland and killing thousands of villagers. From the air it was just a dirty brown scar reaching from the sea but clearly on the ground it was total disaster.
One night a little later in Rabaul on the island of New Britain there was a large earthquake in the middle of the night. Next morning I was shown a serious of photographs on display in the foyer showing the result of a previous earthquake. A wall of water travelled across the harbour hitting the sea wall maybe 100 metres from the motel then continued across the grass and road until it hit the outer wall of the building where I had been sleeping. After smashing through the ground floor units it continued out the other side of the rooms perhaps a metre and a half deep. One astonishing shot showed a wall of brown water pouring into the swimming pool at one end while at the other end it was still calm and blue.
Of course these are just tiddlers. When the Indonesian volcano of Krakatoa exploded in the 1880's, a wall of water was so high it swept away people who had climbed a hill over 30 metres high for protection.
So what has all of this got to do with Hawke's Bay. Throughout the day of the Tsunami I received a constant bombardment of media releases updating me on the tsunami.
At least six bulletins came from the Regional Council, four from the Napier City Council and I assume more were put out by the Hastings District Council.
Three organisations were working to minimise the threat to the people of Hawke's Bay. In the field there seemed to be inconsistency. In Napier the market on Marine parade was in full swing, where as Haumoana and Te Awanga were both evacuated and Waimarama self evacuated. In Clive I heard a woman asking the Police why her area had not been evacuated. The police seemed to be operating under different instructions again.
I am not criticising those in the field. They were doing what seemed right, but it seemed to me the three organisations were unaware of each others actions. It was after all a single threat to the whole area.
Natural disasters are real threats to our safety. It is only a matter of time before the big one, what ever it is, hits Hawke's Bay. Parts of Napier including the airport are only a couple of meters above high tide. A three meter Tsunami on top of a king tide could well reach into the suburbs threatening lives.
We need one controlling civil defence authority possibly working under the control of full time emergency agencies of Fire, Ambulance, and Police. Fire in particular are probably the only organisation with the necessary skills and equipment to handle a major disaster.
Not only would there be a better co-ordinated response, presumably there would also be financial savings for ratepayers.
We should consider the Tsunami a dry run for the real thing. When the real thing does happen we must be prepared in the best way possible.
So if our councilors have any real intention of working in unison then a single emergency management organisation would be a good place to start.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Public Transport
Last year the Hawkes Bay Regional Council awarded the urban Bus contract to “Go Bus”, dropping long time provider Nimons who had been running services for close to a hundred years.
While urban bus services are not profitable as stand alone operations, they are made attractive to operators with ratepayer subsidies. These subsidies remove much of the risk faced other by other providers such as taxi's. The money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is you. Take a look at your Regional Council Rates demand and you will find exactly what you are being charged whether or not, you are a bus user. Additionally Government provides some financial support.
A hundred years or so, few people owned their own transport.
For most mobility was greatly enhanced with the arrival of the railways from the 1880's, followed by electric trams after 1900.
Yes, the first cars were becoming available around the same time, but it was not until the 1950's and 1960's that growing incomes made then affordable to most people.
Private cars offered unrestrained travel and freedom of where to go, and when, and where to live and work.
They also filled the streets with traffic and parked cars.
Eventually the authorities realised the futility of building more and more new roads, bridges, motorways and parking buildings and started to encourage people to use public transport.
Some major cities such as London, New York, Tokyo, and others could not function without mass transport systems. Of course public transport existed well before the arrival of private cars so the travelling and living patterns of the inhabitants developed around the transport system not the other way around.
Wellington is the only city in this country with an effective urban rail system. There, about a quarter of commuters use public transport, compared with just four percent of people traveling into Auckland's CBD, and only one percent in Christchurch. It probably helps that a large number of public servants with their nine to five work ethic, and down town work places provides the numbers and concentration of traffic needed.
To some extent it was just luck that the rail tracks built in the 1880's were still there in the 1940's when the system was electrified. Significantly there has been little improvement in 70 years.
Public transport is clearly loosing out to the private motor vehicle everywhere in New Zealand including Hawke's Bay. This in spite of massive subsidies for public transport funded from taxes, rates, and private motorists.
In Hawke's Bay we have little history of using public transport. Low density urban expansion and widely spread employment generally prevents the concentrations of passengers needed for an effective public transport system.
Schools, the EIT and the hospital do provide the necessary hubs to concentrate traffic so these are the exceptions.
So in spite of the hype pumped out by the Regional Council the reality is urban bus services in Hawke's Bay are failing to attract good passenger loadings and this is supported by general observation of empty and near empty buses.
For the second quarter of 2009 total bus patronage was 110 000 passengers. Fully 85% were travelling free or on some sort of concession and over half were children or students.
Only 15%, or 16 500 trips were full fare paying adults. Sounds a lot but divided over the 65 work days this averages 254 trips a day. Now allowing for each person traveling both from home, then back, this represents only 127 people a day, an absolute minuscule fraction of the over 50 000 people estimated to work in Hawkes Bay each day.
Even this over states bus usage, because not all of these trips are traveling to work, and some must be using weekend services.
So the many are paying for just a few to have an almost personal transport service.
While buses to Flaxmere, the hospital and the EIT do appear quite well supported, by far the majority of services are not.
Remember these buses are costing you the ratepayer over a million dollars a year so ratepayers have a right to question the purpose of the service, how the routes and frequency are decided, and how much it should cost.
The reasoning behind urban transport lacks rationale. My guess is the last Government imposed it on the Regional Council who are more than happy to expand their empire.
Pressure from just a a few individuals may have convinced council that the community is demanding such a service but few of these people ever seem to catch the bus themselves.
While on the surface subsidised urban transport seems like a good idea because in theory it removes vehicles from the roads in reality it can be wasteful because it encourages people to live further from their work place than they might otherwise do, shifting the cost of getting to work onto others.
Only by imposing onerous penalties for car drivers such as tolls, congestion, and parking charges plus massive subsidies can people be shifted out of their cars. Hardly surprising considering the inconvenience and unhealthy atmosphere experienced with public transport.
Those who drive to work face the full cost. There is also the issue of fairness. Clive gets a service. Haumoana, and Te Awanga do not, nor do Waipukarau, Waipawa or Wairoa.
Now I believe we do need buses, but we need to drop the myth we are getting cars off the road. In Hawke's Bay buses are mainly a social service for those who don't have access to private motor vehicles.
Rational thinking must prevail. Subsidies promote waste.
If particular services are not supported by a reasonable numbers of people, then they should be discontinued. The Regional Council does not have a mandate to waste ratepayers money in pursuit of unrealistic sustainability aims.
While urban bus services are not profitable as stand alone operations, they are made attractive to operators with ratepayer subsidies. These subsidies remove much of the risk faced other by other providers such as taxi's. The money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is you. Take a look at your Regional Council Rates demand and you will find exactly what you are being charged whether or not, you are a bus user. Additionally Government provides some financial support.
A hundred years or so, few people owned their own transport.
For most mobility was greatly enhanced with the arrival of the railways from the 1880's, followed by electric trams after 1900.
Yes, the first cars were becoming available around the same time, but it was not until the 1950's and 1960's that growing incomes made then affordable to most people.
Private cars offered unrestrained travel and freedom of where to go, and when, and where to live and work.
They also filled the streets with traffic and parked cars.
Eventually the authorities realised the futility of building more and more new roads, bridges, motorways and parking buildings and started to encourage people to use public transport.
Some major cities such as London, New York, Tokyo, and others could not function without mass transport systems. Of course public transport existed well before the arrival of private cars so the travelling and living patterns of the inhabitants developed around the transport system not the other way around.
Wellington is the only city in this country with an effective urban rail system. There, about a quarter of commuters use public transport, compared with just four percent of people traveling into Auckland's CBD, and only one percent in Christchurch. It probably helps that a large number of public servants with their nine to five work ethic, and down town work places provides the numbers and concentration of traffic needed.
To some extent it was just luck that the rail tracks built in the 1880's were still there in the 1940's when the system was electrified. Significantly there has been little improvement in 70 years.
Public transport is clearly loosing out to the private motor vehicle everywhere in New Zealand including Hawke's Bay. This in spite of massive subsidies for public transport funded from taxes, rates, and private motorists.
In Hawke's Bay we have little history of using public transport. Low density urban expansion and widely spread employment generally prevents the concentrations of passengers needed for an effective public transport system.
Schools, the EIT and the hospital do provide the necessary hubs to concentrate traffic so these are the exceptions.
So in spite of the hype pumped out by the Regional Council the reality is urban bus services in Hawke's Bay are failing to attract good passenger loadings and this is supported by general observation of empty and near empty buses.
For the second quarter of 2009 total bus patronage was 110 000 passengers. Fully 85% were travelling free or on some sort of concession and over half were children or students.
Only 15%, or 16 500 trips were full fare paying adults. Sounds a lot but divided over the 65 work days this averages 254 trips a day. Now allowing for each person traveling both from home, then back, this represents only 127 people a day, an absolute minuscule fraction of the over 50 000 people estimated to work in Hawkes Bay each day.
Even this over states bus usage, because not all of these trips are traveling to work, and some must be using weekend services.
So the many are paying for just a few to have an almost personal transport service.
While buses to Flaxmere, the hospital and the EIT do appear quite well supported, by far the majority of services are not.
Remember these buses are costing you the ratepayer over a million dollars a year so ratepayers have a right to question the purpose of the service, how the routes and frequency are decided, and how much it should cost.
The reasoning behind urban transport lacks rationale. My guess is the last Government imposed it on the Regional Council who are more than happy to expand their empire.
Pressure from just a a few individuals may have convinced council that the community is demanding such a service but few of these people ever seem to catch the bus themselves.
While on the surface subsidised urban transport seems like a good idea because in theory it removes vehicles from the roads in reality it can be wasteful because it encourages people to live further from their work place than they might otherwise do, shifting the cost of getting to work onto others.
Only by imposing onerous penalties for car drivers such as tolls, congestion, and parking charges plus massive subsidies can people be shifted out of their cars. Hardly surprising considering the inconvenience and unhealthy atmosphere experienced with public transport.
Those who drive to work face the full cost. There is also the issue of fairness. Clive gets a service. Haumoana, and Te Awanga do not, nor do Waipukarau, Waipawa or Wairoa.
Now I believe we do need buses, but we need to drop the myth we are getting cars off the road. In Hawke's Bay buses are mainly a social service for those who don't have access to private motor vehicles.
Rational thinking must prevail. Subsidies promote waste.
If particular services are not supported by a reasonable numbers of people, then they should be discontinued. The Regional Council does not have a mandate to waste ratepayers money in pursuit of unrealistic sustainability aims.
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