Crash course on coastal earthquake legacy issues
CCRU Meeting of Groups from South of the Bridge November 11, 2019 at Pleasant Point Yacht Club
Community Groups give newly elected City Councillors and Community Board Members a crash course on coastal earthquake legacy issues.
A number of community groups from South of the Bridge met with the newly elected Christchurch City Councillors and Community Board Members for the Coastal Ward. The purpose of this gathering was to get them up to speed on local coastal issues and important ongoing projects. It was a chance for the representatives to see the vast range of expert knowledge in the community and encourage them to use this knowledge as a resource.
Several important points were highlighted.
Many of the issues, such as the lack of estuary edge repair, surface flooding and inadequate but solvable drainage are all still earthquake legacy issues that have yet to be addressed and continue to be incorrectly placed in the Coastal Hazard space. The community has indicated for a long time that earthquake legacy issues must be resolved before Coastal Hazards can be a focus.
That this South of the Bridge end of the estuary is the 'Drain' for the city and warrants attention to cope with what will only be an increasing capacity.
The inconsistent and difficult consent process for residential building makes new builds a hard and expensive project to tackle.
The lack of and the replacement of permanent commercial structures South of the Bridge was also highlighted as an anomaly of the (somewhat rushed) District Plan, as RUO only pertains to residential dwellings. Though few in number, these lost local gathering places have had an impact on the well-being and connectedness of our community.
It was not lost on the group that the sea level rise discussion, while seemingly focused by the Council on the coastal areas, should in fact be a city-wide discussion.
Feedback from our elected representatives was that they found the meeting both inspiring and useful and would like to be part of a further update event in the future.
