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Volunteer lifeguards at Mangawhai have been stunned by Kaipara District Council’s proposal to delay – for at least three years – repair work on a large slip that has rendered their clubhouse unusable.
The slip, on council land, has already made the clubhouse a no-go area for a year.
Mangawhai Heads Volunteer Lifeguard Service (MHVLS), which is operating out of temporary portacoms and containers, said the reduced facilities could impact response time, risking the increased likelihood of loss of life or serious injury, and it is urging council to reconsider.
In its draft long term plan (LTP) for 2024-2027, which goes out for public consultation on April 4, KDC proposes to defer repairing the slip during the three-year budget period.
“The cost has been estimated at around $1.7 to $1.9 million and we have not provisioned for it in our budgets for 2024-2027,” a consultation document stated. It added that council had agreed to set aside $150,000 for “initial investigations of the area”.
A council spokesperson said last week the draft might yet be amended before its March 27 adoption.
A significant landslide after the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods cascaded into the rear of the clubhouse, leaving it and nearby public tracks off limits.
Since then, as an interim measure, the surf volunteers have been working from temporary structures on a section of the car park, above the cordoned-off clubhouse.
The club has been operating from the site since 1963. Its building, which sustained moderate damage in the flooding, is insured, but the insurers won’t begin repairing it until the slip issue is resolved. The prospect has left the club reeling.
“Rather than getting on with stabilising the slip and allowing the surf club to reopen, it appears that council intends to leave it as is, which means the surf club will remain abandoned by council,” MHVLS chair Jess Costello said.
“We do not have a solution-focused and ‘get on with it’ attitude in council,” she said. “They are moving at a snail’s pace and are kicking the can down the road.”
Costello said council’s proposal to delay the repair would end up costing more, and deprive the community of a safe beach environment.
MHVLS was also unimpressed with the decision to devote $150,000 for “initial investigations”, rather than focusing on the actual repair.
“We don’t agree with this direction and believe that there is widespread support in the community to just get on and fix the slip,” Costello said.
The club is calling on people to let council know during the LTP consultation that this was a priority.
“The lifesaving facility and our beach lifestyle are an iconic part of our community and what makes us who we are.”
Surf Lifesaving New Zealand (SLSNZ) also weighed in.
“We are urging the Kaipara District Council to prioritise the clean-up of the slip,” SLSNZ Northern Region general manager Zac Franich said. “MHVLS can then get on with creating a facility that will see them into the future.”
Franich said the club’s lifeguards had rescued 232 people and spent more than 37,000 hours on patrol over the past decade.
“Without their support, hundreds of lives would have been lost.”
The fact the club had been forced to operate without proper facilities over the past year hampered its ability to deliver those vital services, he said. Although Mangawhai’s junior surf programme was thriving amid the region’s consistent growth, retaining volunteer surf lifeguards was difficult, “especially when working out of suboptimal conditions like portacoms”.
“Providing them with a safe, warm and fully functioning clubhouse is not a luxury but an absolute necessity for the critical work they do.”
At a KDC meeting on February 28, MHVLS representatives told councillors that a recent reinspection of the clubhouse by insurers found that additional damage to the building had occurred, due to council’s lack of action.
Mayor Craig Jepson, in response, assured them that council understood the situation and was “not sitting on our hands”, but added that progress on such things did not happen overnight.
“The draft LTP is decided by full council and we have to look at all our funding options. And we’re still going through those, but at this point we are very strapped for money,” he said. “That’s about all I can tell you at this point.”
Days later, the consultation document emerged, proposing that the slip repair not be included in its budget for 2024-2027.
Council declined to comment.
‘Someone could potentially die’
The provisional operating conditions at Mangawhai Heads are far from ideal, lifesavers say, especially when facing time-critical rescues or first aid incidents.
A serious incident on February 18 saw a surfer who sustained a critical spinal injury rescued by lifeguards with the help of fellow surfers, before being airlifted to Middlemore Hospital. Although the incident occurred outside normal patrol hours, because junior surf training happened to be underway, lifeguards had quick access to equipment.
But volunteer lifeguard Isaac Pow told a KDC meeting in late February that if juniors had not been training at the time of Matthew Scott’s injury, lifeguards would have had to unlock the provisional storage facilities to access equipment. That time delay could have been critical.
“We need to get out there as fast as we can to help someone who is either drowning or in a bad situation,” he told councillors. “I realised we’re actually in a situation where someone can potentially die because we’re working out of temporary accommodation, containers and portacoms.”
When the clubhouse was operating, equipment was readily available and could be “grabbed in seconds”. The present situation was not good enough, Pow said.
“We need our club, we need it desperately. We need the slip removed as fast as possible so that our building can be resurrected.”
Mayor Craig Jepson told Pow that many issues coming before council “didn’t get solved overnight”.
Engineers explore solutions
Civil engineer and Mangawhai Heads Surf Lifesaving member David Wheatley said the slip, which displaced an estimated 560 cubic metres of debris, had caused moderate damage to the clubhouse, and also damaged Māori heritage sites.
Wheatley told a Kaipara District Council meeting in December that geotech consultants Tonkin + Taylor recommended that repair work start quickly to avoid additional slope failures due to continued, uncontrolled exposure of rock face.
If left exposed to future significant weather events it was likely that more debris would move, resulting in further damage to the building and Māori heritage sites, and the slip would become far more difficult to repair.
Possible solutions included a Shotcrete face, catch fences and drape mesh.
Wheatley said the preferred option – supported by the construction industry, Tonkin + Taylor and Kaipara hapū Te Uri o Hau – was drape mesh, which entailed netting being held in place by long pins bolted into the rock. The job would also involve moving unstable material from behind the clubhouse to the front of the building, where it could help protect against beachfront erosion.
The estimated cost for what he described as “a 100-year solution” would be $1.9 million, plus $2000 to $5000 annually for maintenance. The timeframe for the work would be one year from signing to completion. As soon as the slope was stabilised, the insured clubhouse could be repaired.
Wheatley noted that some had suggested abandoning the clubhouse and building a new one on the lower carpark. But, demolishing the existing building and rebuilding without repairing the slip would in the end be significantly more expensive.
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