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Auckland Council wants to hear from people affected by this year’s floods and storms to help it to prepare better and cope with future extreme weather events.
Two long-term recovery plans are being drawn up – the Tāmaki Makaurau Recovery Plan, to prioritise recovery from this year’s events, and Making Space for Water, a scheme to reduce flood risk and improve the stormwater network – and council is seeking public feedback on both.
Council group recovery manager Mat Tucker said thousands of people had been affected by the extreme weather in recent months, with homes, businesses and entire communities suffering long-term impacts.
“We want to hear more about how the storms this year affected homes and communities, so we can consider what’s needed to achieve more resilience for our city,” he said.
“Climate change means we can expect to see more frequent extreme weather events, and we have a responsibility now to change the way we work with nature to soften the blow when storms come.
“This consultation provides an opportunity for all Aucklanders to have their say and shape how we recover together.”
Council wants to know how the storms affected individuals and families, what’s most important for recovery and how it can better prepare for future storms and floods. It also wants to hear views on proposed stormwater improvements, including culvert and bridge upgrades, more maintenance, allowing communities to prepare for and increase their resilience to flooding, and the creation of “blue-green networks” – new waterways and parks that would allow stormwater to safely pass through urban areas.
Tucker said council had a role in ensuring Aucklanders knew what to do before, during and after a flood.
“We want to empower communities to mitigate flood risks before a flood happens,” he said. “Knowing more about how floods happen and being prepared is part of the challenge of learning to live in our new environmental reality.”
Healthy Waters’ head of planning, Nick Vigar, said a change in thinking was needed around the traditional approach to stormwater management.
“It’s not practical to build pipes big enough to take all stormwater from every conceivable event, so we need to make space for water to flow safely through communities without causing damage to people and properties,” he said.
People are encouraged to read council’s storm recovery and resilience consultation document, available to read online at www.akhaveyoursay.nz/stormrecovery, before providing feedback.
A public information and Have Your Say session will be held in Puhoi, one of the worst affected communities locally, this Wednesday, August 16, at the Centennial Hall, from 4.30pm to 6.30pm.
There is also a chance for community groups and organisations to have their say at a special online session being run from 10am to 5pm on Thursday, August 31 – register here: https://akhaveyoursay.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/embeds/projects/87283/survey-tools/95981
Otherwise, feedback can be submitted online at www.akhaveyoursay.nz/stormrecovery, or in person at Warkworth, Wellsford and Mahurangi East libraries, until Thursday, August 31.
Council is also currently consulting on its overall strategy for dealing with such events, the Auckland Civil Defence Emergency Management Group Plan, details of which can be found at https://akhaveyoursay.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/cdem-group-plan
Bid to put emergency resilience on the map
Rodney Local Board is looking at drawing up a comprehensive regional map to show how “emergency-ready” local communities are in the case of future extreme weather events.
The idea came from Warkworth member Ivan Wagstaff during a board workshop on August 2, when emergency management and resilience was under discussion with Auckland Council’s community broker for Rodney, Sue Dodds.
Wagstaff said a central map showing known levels of potential hazard or preparedness would be helpful for staff and the wider community.
“I think it would mean a lot to the community if they could walk into the local board offices and see a map that recognises their community and their current level of preparedness,” he said.
“If there were another emergency this afternoon, we could see straight away ‘these are the areas that will need help’.”
Dodds said that although council had set up a recovery office and such activity was the responsibility of Auckland Emergency Management (AEM), neither had the scope or resources to carry it out at present, whereas the local board had budgeted $25,000 for emergency response, so it was something that it could do, and she would set the process in motion.
She added that the eastern Rodney area already had an advantage, in the form of Neighbourhood Support coordinator Sue Robertson, who had a comprehensive network of local emergency response contacts and groups, and who worked closely with AEM.
