\u201cIt\u2019s saved my house,\u201d she said bluntly.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just look out and the sea seems quite high, but usually when I walk down, actually it\u2019s fine and the wall is doing its job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing like opening those curtains when there\u2019s a storm because there\u2019s no street lights … it started not being such a delight when I was at risk of losing the house, so it\u2019s really made all the difference.\u201c<\/p>\n
A short walk to the beach is an understatement for Jo Poland. Photo \/ Christel Yardley, Waikato Times<\/p>\n
The seawall\u2019s success marks a long-awaited victory for Sunset Beach Surf Lifesaving Trust chair Malcolm Beattie, who spearheaded the raising of all the funding and campaigned for years to get consents to build from the council.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just look out and the sea seems quite high, but usually when I walk down, actually it\u2019s fine and the wall is doing its job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council has previously said an independent commissioner was brought in to determine consent and described the seawall as a community-led effort to protect dunes, public spaces and nearby homes.<\/p>\n
Updated comments were sought, but the council could not respond by deadline.<\/p>\n
All responsibility for upkeep and funding now rests solely on the trust \u2013 a non-sustainable solution going forward, Beattie said.<\/p>\n
A comparison of the seawall in April to its current September state. Photo \/ Waikato Times<\/p>\n
\u201cLocal and central [government] should have some skin in the game at least working with us … we\u2019re doing council\u2019s work here but we\u2019re the ones that have got the risk and pay the money.<\/p>\n
Beattie said that if it took a hypothetical budget of $60,000 a year to contain the sea, the council \u201cspend more than that on toilet paper\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where people are coming to recreate and that\u2019s a council responsibility to provide services at the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beattie said the current council has made steps to forge a working relationship with the community, but it\u2019s all talk before the \u201cmoney hits the road\u201d.<\/p>\n
The seawall has also provided relief on insurance worries for home owners. Poland said she\u2019s not covered because erosion is classified as \u201ca natural event, not a natural hazard\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said a 1996 geologist report produced before she built her home made no explicit mention of coastal erosion caused by rising sea levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get no support at all … there\u2019s a bit of inequity going on from my perspective. As people lose their homes, they go away and they\u2019re quiet because they\u2019re too busy coping with things to keep fighting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need a plan and the Helen Clark Foundation has suggested a new form of insurance for people dealing with the effects of climate change so the cost doesn\u2019t all fall on home owners.\u201d<\/p>\n
The risk facing home owners isn\u2019t stopping new faces from joining the neighbourhood, however.<\/p>\n
New home owner and Airbnb hostess Ruth Riding is stoked to be a part of the tight-knit Port Waikato community. Photo \/ Christel Yardley, Waikato Times<\/p>\n
Ruth Riding bought a coastal home just two months ago to live out her dream of running an Airbnb and says the risk was \u201cabsolutely worth taking\u201d, despite having a few raised eyebrows at the purchase.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people are just surprised, but I think because the seawall had just been put in, there was a lot of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s saved my house,\u201d she said bluntly. \u201cYou just look out and the sea seems quite high, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[89693,7972,9191,273,52151,738,305,1345,10053,4960,440,103476,117,111,139,69,9769,6365,29268,312,147,120414,11925,42903,61,1524,65861,33057],"class_list":["post-606737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-89693","tag-beach","tag-coastal","tag-environment","tag-erosion","tag-funding","tag-have","tag-home","tag-house","tag-live","tag-local","tag-maintain","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-owners","tag-poland","tag-port","tag-says","tag-science","tag-seawall","tag-seek","tag-sunset","tag-to","tag-waikato","tag-waikatos","tag-wouldnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}