Stay or go: Homeowners worried about delayed flood planning
Nelson man John-Paul Pochin and his wife don’t want to move house, but they’ve talked about whether they should.
The Maitai River surged onto some of their neighbours’ properties in the central city suburb of The Wood during heavy rain in 2022.
The flood risk wasn’t going away, Pochin said.
Council modelling showed the low-lying coastal suburb, on the river mouth, was among parts of the city expected to be hardest hit soonest under river flooding and sea level rise scenarios.
“We wouldn’t want to have to move. But that’s the kind of conversation that maybe we need to have if the flooding can’t be prevented,” Pochin, who was worried about impacts on infrastructure in the suburb, whether his house was directly impacted or not, said.
Despite Nelson City Council communicating the increased flood risk in a letter to the suburb’s residents six years ago, nothing had been done to help deal with the problem, he said.
Nearly a year ago, the council approved The Wood as its first area for community engagement under the council’s “detailed” climate adaptation planning.
But those talks were now on hold.
Pochin said central and local government leaders seemed to find climate change too hard and expensive to tackle – instead focusing on developments like building highways, and hoping they weren’t “holding the can when it all turns to custard”.
Climate change was constantly happening faster than predicted, and not talking about the impacts gave residents the impression everything was going to be OK, he said.
“People forget pretty quickly, and in some ways they want to hope everything is going to carry on as normal.”
Conversations about what the local community could do to prepare for flooding, even small steps, couldn’t wait any longer, he said.
“Even just making people aware of the risks, so it’s not a surprise when this happens again.”
Council chief executive Nigel Philpott said community engagement with The Wood was paused in March.
“Key matters including council powers, roles, and funding arrangements under any new national framework have not yet been sufficiently resolved by Government to enable meaningful public engagement,” he said.
Climate Change policy was a central Government responsibility, Philpott said.
But the council “acknowledges it has an important role to play”, and “remains committed to taking practical and pragmatic steps to address climate change, with a focus on actions that deliver real, practical change, achievable [emissions] reductions and value for money for ratepayers”.
Current initiatives included investment in the eBus network, landfill gas capture, and solar installations across a number of council and community facilities co-funded by government agency EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority), he said.
The Insurance Council of New Zealand warned urgent action was needed to reduce the risks of climate impacts on communities, like flooding and erosion, to protect people and maintain their access to insurance.
Climate hazards were increasing in frequency and severity, with extreme weather already hitting New Zealand repeatedly in 2026, resilience leader James Baigent said.
Councils were unlikely to be able to fund the scale of adaptation required on their own, particularly given existing fiscal constraints, he said.
The Government expected councils to stay within an annual rates increase target of 2-4% per capita from next year, and said statutory requirements were likely to take effect later this decade.
“The Government’s National Adaptation Framework and proposed planning reforms are important first steps, but greater urgency is needed to put in place the rules and tools that enable councils and communities to act and invest in adaptation,” Baigent said.
Accelerated investment was needed in resilience infrastructure, he said.
Government investment in flood protection in places like Hawke’s Bay showed how effective such work was in avoiding future losses, he said.
The $4 million Taradale stop bank improvements completed before Cyclone Gabrielle – part of the Government’s $200m investment in flood protection through the Regional Infrastructure Fund – were assessed as preventing billions of dollars in damage to around 10,000 properties, Baigent said.
Planning and environmental legislation under Resource Management Act (RMA) reform should be progressed immediately to help avoid new development in high-risk zones, he said.
Coordination on adaptation between central and local government also needed improvement, he said.
Chief executive of Local Government New Zealand, Scott Necklen, said while co-investment between central and local government through the Regional Infrastructure Fund represented good steps forward, there was still some way to go for longer term funding certainty.
“With policies like rates capping coming into place, work is needed to ensure there is a clear and durable co-funding arrangement between central and local government and households to ensure investment in resilience and adaptation is not compromised.”
Minister of Climate Change Simon Watts said the Government aimed to pass the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill into law later this year, replacing the RMA.
That would give councils clearer direction on how to manage natural hazard risks, and ensure natural hazard information and climate impacts were consistently factored into land use decisions, he said.
The Government was progressing legislation (amending the Climate Change Response Act) to support councils to consistently undertake adaptation planning for high risk areas, he said.
On funding, the Government was progressing work under the National Adaptation Framework to shift spending towards climate-related risk reduction, Watts said.
But planning for how to share the costs of adaptation was complex, and required time “to get things right”.
Councils would be able to apply for variations to the rates cap target range if they were deemed by the regulator to have prudent financial management, Watts said.
The Local Government System Improvement Bill would “further improve” co-ordination between local and central government, and ensure councils were focussed on managing natural hazard risks exacerbated by climate change, Watts said.
By Katy Jones, Nelson Mail
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