Letters: Scrutiny needed over council’s handling of Piha Campground
Scrutiny needed over handling of campground
The performance of Auckland Council over the Piha Campground needs to be scrutinised. Flooding at this location has been known for as long as a campground has existed, which goes back to the 1920s. Indeed, much of the Piha Domain was originally a wetland.
After flooding in 2017 and 2018, a number of actions to mitigate it were floated by the council. This included the extreme and unaffordable proposals for dams in the hills and a tunnel to divert the floodwaters.
The community supported soft engineering options to address erosion on Piha Stream which threatened the gallery, and removal of man-made obstacles in the Piha wetland so that it functioned during storm events.
None of these was actioned despite the council’s Healthy Waters having gone as far as applying for a resource consent to address the erosion and having funding in its budgets to restore the hydrology of the wetland.
These actions would not have solved the flooding issue, but would have saved the gallery and lessened the risk to the campground of flooding.
One action was partly carried out. Healthy Waters did show the Waitākere Ranges Local Board, which has governance of all these facilities as they are on local parks, that it had installed a camera underneath the Seaview Rd bridge next to the campground which could remotely track flood waters rising in the Piha Stream.
The board advocated that this was linked to an early warning system as flood waters rose. The fire station with a siren is only a few metres away, and could be linked to this. This never happened.
Surely the simple expedient of a warning siren could address the risk. The council should action this smartly so that camping can occur this summer.
Especially in the light of its failure to action any of the many engineering reports it has commissioned over the last two decades.
Sandra Coney, QSO, former member and former chair, Waitākere Ranges Local Board.
Heavy-handed approach
The heavy-handedness of the property management team at Auckland Council in considering closing the Piha Domain campground is totally second rate. The lengths staff at the campground go to ensure their clients are safe is heroic, consulting forecasts and cancelling bookings in advance of predicted extreme weather.
So many people who would otherwise not be able to holiday at the beach get to enjoy inexpensive breaks, as do low-budget tourists.
Come on Auckland Council property management. There are many ways to ensure safety but still not kill joy!
Chris Chrystall, Piha.
A third way
It seems to me that the most significant part of the most recent poll(s) is that more than four out of 10 New Zealanders do not want a bar of the two main parties. It seems to be an intuitive reaction, as they haven’t collectively coalesced around any of the minor parties to any great extent.
Who can blame them? After over 40 years of neoliberal economics, things don’t seem to be getting any better. The gap between haves and have-nots is getting greater, critical infrastructure and services are underfunded, youth unemployment distressingly high etc.
All that is really being offered is more of the same, presented in increasingly unconvincing ways.
Going back to the stifling days of Muldoonism is clearly not an option, but there must be a “third way”.
Surely, it is not too much to ask that our politicians at least engage in debate on alternatives.
Richard Alspach, Dargaville.
Taxing debate
Contributions to the tax debate by Sir John Key and Bruce Cotterill (Sep 12) are misleading regarding their claims about Labour’s tax proposals. They lump them together with policies from other parties and claim they will inhibit business opportunities and investment.
If they want us to believe that a left government will adopt every tax suggested by Opportunity and the Greens, shouldn’t they also be concerned that a right-wing government would adopt NZ First’s proposals to buy up BNZ and clamp down on the electricity gentailers who pay big dividends to the Government?
Cotterill emphasises that we don’t need more tax. How then might we pay more for defence, education and prisons which he has previously advocated?
Does he not see any need to spend more to mitigate and adapt to climate change, cater for our ageing population and deal with the infrastructure deficit?
Most of these challenges are vital to progress for all sectors of our economy, including most businesses.
David Holm, Mount Roskill.
Flick the switch
The answer to the current panic about AI seems very simple – turn the electricity off!
Joe Silcock, Waihī Beach.
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