Beachfront owners seek council action

A group of Whitianga residents whose beachfront homes are under threat by erosion are pressing the Thames-Coromandel District Council for urgent action to stop the sea swallowing their properties.

Three residents from the northern end of Buffalo Beach Rd attended a Mercury Bay Community Board meeting last week to ask for action to protect the reserve in front of seven homes that was "highly vulnerable to encroachment and inundation by the sea".

Terry Gay, Warren Harris and John Tutill said discussions with the council, parks and reserves officers and Environment Waikato had been going on for five years without remedy.

They said a timber dinghy ramp at the neighbouring Mercury Bay Boating Club was one of the problems, as was a rock wall erected some years ago to protect properties further along. "Where the rock wall finishes, we are getting eddies and undercutting," Mr Harris said.

Mr Tutill said they had tried planting, and the plants just washed away.

"We need council and EW to work with the homeowners to protect their council reserve and indirectly, our homes.

"The need is immediate. Working as a group is a better course of action," Mr Tutill said.

"We need to find out what remedies are available. We need this tomorrow, not next year."

TCDC Mercury Bay area manager Lesley McCormick said it was contrary to council policy to construct any coastal defence structure on council reserve, but a meeting of all parties would be facilitated in the near future.

The group suggested their area could be used as a test case for experimental remedies such as large sand containers known as sausages.

Board members voiced their dissatisfaction at the "unhelpful" policy. Councillor Dal Minogue said steps should be taken to rewrite the policy to make it workable.

Later the board resolved that a resource consent should be sought to extend a further 70 metres of rock defences at the southern end of Buffalo Beach to protect the road, noting it was outside council policy to do so.

It also resolved to request "that funds be provided for the gaining of a resource consent in the 2010/11 annual plan," and "requests council to undertake an urgent review of the current coastal policies, using this (southern Buffalo Beach) project as an example, for completion by 2010".

- Hauraki Herald