Owners of flood-hit West Auckland homes told ‘Managed retreat is the only option’.

Hundreds of owners of West Auckland homes inundated in the Auckland Anniversary Day flooding launched a petition for a Government-funded managed retreat at an emotional meeting on Saturday.

“Managed retreat is the only option,” said Lyall Carter, chairman of the WAIF (West Auckland is Flooding) group of homeowners.

“We believe that a fair and equitable process must be established to identify the most flood-affected homes for buyout, for retreat on a voluntary basis,” he told homeowners and MPs from Labour, National and ACT gathered in the Tirimoana School in Te Atatū.

Carter’s call brought cheers from homeowners, who were later told by Auckland Council’s Healthy Waters head of planning Nick Vigar: “I’d like to be able to stand here and say there is an infrastructure solution for your flooding problem, but that is not the reality.”

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Vigar faced an audience angry with perceived council failures that contributed to flooding, but drew applause when he outlined how the high costs of infrastructure meant managed retreat was a cheaper option for many homes.

“For those properties in these high-risk places, especially those that have been hit multiple times, in most cases there isn’t an infrastructure solution that costs less than the value of those properties,” Vigar said.

“Around the region we have roughly 50,000 properties in a one in 100 year flood plain,” he said.

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Lyall Carter, chairman of the WAIF (West Auckland is Flooding) says ‘Managed retreat is the only option.’

Around 10% of those were flooded in the floods in late January.

Carter urged people to sign WAIF’s petition at Change.org.

He said as well as a fair system for the Government to buy out owners of flood-prone homes, and to fund flood protections for those that can be saved, there needed to be a compensation scheme to pay for accommodation for people who had been red and yellow-stickered out of their homes.

Many homeowners only had limited cover from their insurers, and when that ran out, they would face paying rent for their temporary flats as well as repayments on their home loans.

“A compensation package must be put in place when their accommodation payouts form insurance runs out,” Carter said.

Sharon Smith from Don Buck Road in Massey was flooded out of her home just five months after it had been repaired following flooding in August 2021.

“The rental I’m in, I’m only able to stay there until mid-January,” she said.

“If we haven’t had a managed retreat by that time, where will I go and live?”

After the traumatic floods of August 2021 she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.

“We are very, very much in dire straits. We don’t have much time to wait. That’s why we are asking for urgent managed retreat,” Smith said.

Cyclone recovery minister Grant Robertson said on March 22 that the Government would decide within a month which areas devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle would be deemed “high-risk” and possibly not rebuilt on.

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Amrita Banger was flooded out of her home in August 2021, and then again in the 2023 flooding.

Owners of flooded homes used the meeting to put questions to council officials about the council’s failure to maintain streams into which storm water is directed.

Carter called for an immediate plan for continual and regular stream maintenance as winter was approaching.

The responsibility of maintaining streams used for storm water run-off must sit with the central Government, Carter said.

Many out West also feel betrayed by the massive development that had happened in their areas, which had seen vast swathes of rural land concreted over.

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The August 2021 flooding resulted in one man’s death.

They say that has created an impervious layer which prevents the land from absorbing rainfall, and exacerbated runoff into the streams that flooded their homes.

One speaker said since 2010 there had been 144,000 hectares of development consented.

She had lived in the area since the 1970s.

“We haven’t had prior flooding in our homes. Since 2021, we’ve had water enter our homes twice, and enter the properties of our neighbours four, and in some cases five times,” she said.

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Standing room only in the Tiromoana School for the West Auckland is Flooding public meeting.

“Why keep building? Why keep sending all of that run-off, and I might admit it’s great run-off. It gets collected up and hits that river real fast, but where does it go from there? Into my home,” she said.

Vigar told the meeting they were right.

“Every new bit of impervious surface that goes in puts all of those houses at risk in the flood plain at a higher level of risk,” Vigar said.

“Development does make matters worse,” he said.

Local MP Phil Twyford has been lobbying for a managed retreat scheme to help his local constituents.

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Labour MP Phil Twford (dressed in a yellow shirt) sits beside National MP Chris Penk (dressed in a blue jacket) at the WAIF meeting ofg flood-hit homeowners in West Auckland.

“You have been let down by poor governance, and poor policy, and you deserve better,” Twyford told the meeting.

“My priority right now is that we get a well-designed and properly-funded managed retreat solution, not only for West Auckland but for all the flood and cyclone-affected communities around New Zealand,” he said.

He said there was a need for urgency.

“People are paying rent and mortgages. They are living in sub-standard, temporary accommodation,” he said.

National MP Chris Penk said: “National will support strongly the Government in making practical plans to resolve the situation you have, and quickly.”