To stay or go: Is managed retreat on the cards for some cyclone-hit areas?

To stay or to go – either way, property owners in regions hardest hit by Cyclone Gabrielle want answers.

The government suggested it was urgent to get them those answers – and to have the conversations about not going back, about not rebuilding, “over the next few weeks”.

The others helping make the hard calls over ‘managed retreat’ were insurers, and councils.

The two councils most affected, Hastings District and Gisborne District, both say residents will get a huge say in decisions.

While Hastings said “we pretty quickly need to sit down” to work it out, Tai Rāwhiti said this could not be rushed.

Central Hawke’s Bay District Council said of its own ground zero – Waipawa’s neighbourhood of 200 homes flooded by breaches in a stopbank that has been hurriedly fixed but not raised – “there is no clear evidence to say that there is urgency to move that community”.

Tai Rāwhiti / Gisborne

The government said it was important not to waste resources rebuilding areas that would end up being abandoned.

However, Gisborne District Council chief executive Nedine Thatcher Swann told RNZ: “That’s not a discussion that we’re having at the moment”.

Instead, the priority was housing people during the state of emergency and reconnecting Tokomaru Bay, Te Puia and Waipiro Bay that were still cut off.

“We need to have those [conversations about infrastructure] once we’ve been able to connect those communities back together,” Thatcher Swann said Tuesday.

Seven storms or floods in 18 months had shown low-lying settlements and rivers repeatedly hit, but it was a “long journey” deciding what to do about them, she said.

The government talked at the weekend about getting conversations going “pretty rapidly” for places that would not be rebuilt.

“We’ve got to be careful in terms of the degree of urgency within which we move,” Thatcher Swann said.

“For Tai Rāwhiti, you know, 28 percent of our land is Māori freehold land, and some of those areas have been the hardest impacted.

“So we really need to go at pace as fast is our hapū and iwi are ready to do that.”

Legislative changes to improve land zoning could happen quickly, but taking people along with that would take time.

“Ultimately, that’s a landowner’s decision around where they want to relocate. … [Some] will be talking with the insurance companies about how they can address or mitigate any future impacts from potential flooding.

“But, you know, until we’ve gone through that process of working with the communities, looking at what managed retreat might look like for some particular areas, we’re really not in the position to be telling people where they can and can’t build – until we create new rules around what we know now with these adverse weather impacts.”

Thatcher Swann assured locals Finance Minister Grant Robertson, who was in the region at the weekend, had heard their concerns, and the council was “very much part of those conversations that are happening”.

“So we will contribute in any way where the government can also support us in that, too.”

Hastings

Hastings district mayor Sandra Hazlehurst said residents were already making decisions about whether to stay or go.

“There is a lot of people facing uncertainty and a lot of people wanting to understand whether they get their dwellings repaired.”

They needed to have conversations “pretty quickly” with the government, insurance and banks, to give them certainty, she said.

“It’s as soon as we can get all our heads together at the table because people are asking, constantly.”

Housing assessments had been finished by the council, with 680 yellow stickered, she said.

As to the big picture, “understanding the risk in our most vulnerable areas around our three main rivers … is something that we will do as a region as part of our recovery”.

It was heartening to hear a hapū considering moving whānau to a new papakāinga housing development in the hills, Hazlehurst said.

Māori communities who had lived between the two rivers – the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro – for decades were weighing their options, she said.

“So there are different ways and people looking and finding answers for themselves.”

The work on coastal hazards they had already been doing now had to be expanded, the mayor said.

“But it’s the individual homeowner at the moment that is our concern.”

Central Hawke’s Bay

Central Hawke’s Bay mayor Alex Walker said future zoning determining where people could build was the key, and the laws around that, such as the Resource Management Act, had to be made less “clunky”.

Everyone had to get a lot clearer about the appropriateness of the flood protection and the infrastructure provided around those communities, she said.

Waipawa residents fled from low-lying streets two weeks ago, with water overflowing the breached stopbanks, some told RNZ.

Electrician Bryce Fergusson was one of them – his house was cleaned out and drying, and his whānau were adamant they wanted to stay.

But he admitted: “We’re definitely nervous. We’re definitely worried about it now. And after going through it, it’s something that’s going to be at the forefront of our minds.”

It was not just major works that needed doing, but simple regular tasks like cleaning out creeks to take stormwater, Fergusson said.

Alex Walker said picking what places not to rebuild “is not something that is on our radar right now”.

“There’s not a clear locality within central Hawke’s Bay district where we would be talking about urgent withdrawal of property.”

She was satisfied the riverflow and flood data they had from the regional council was good enough, and regularly updated.

Now what they needed was a unified voice on cyclone recovery from the four Hawke’s Bay local bodies, and the region’s 10 iwi groups, and they were working on a structure for that, Walker said.

“The commitment that we have heard from government is that they want to be part of a regionally-led and enabled solution.

“And we are working on putting that together with them. And in good faith.”