Build, baby, build…

[As published in March/April BayBuzz magazine.]

As AUT Chancellor Rob Campbell wrote recently in Newsroom:

“Obviously we currently have to do a lot of repair jobs, across many sectors, arising both from current destruction and from past neglect. But let’s not confuse that with letting the bigger, tough, but ultimately defining issues stand aside. They start with more ‘why’, ‘what for’, ‘what if’ than the ‘build, baby, build’ brigade would like.”

As he notes, most of the discussion of how to respond will be driven by the interests who “delivered the infrastructure we have now. They planned, engineered, built and maintained the roads, buildings, bridges and connections that we have now. If only we give them more money to do more it will all be okay? You reckon?”

As the ‘how to respond’ debate unfolds, some like Campbell will raise fundamental questions about the kind of growth we actually should aspire to, which old paradigms to abandon, and whether our elected governors are able to provide leadership and make the difficult but foresightful decisions that best secure a sustainable environmental and economic future. 

Others, many with their hands on the actual levers of response, will simply fall back to the classic infrastructure mantra: ‘patch, repair, upgrade’. This approach got us where we are, and is especially the default approach in areas like Hawke’s Bay, where small rate bases and large spaces create “a strong requirement to ‘make the best’ of any infrastructure that is put in place,” as AUT (School of Future Environments) Professor John Tookey puts it. Roads are patched, repaired or upgraded. They are only very rarely replaced. The same is true of water supplies, bridges, drains, stormwater systems.

That fairly describes our Hawke’s Bay situation.

Let’s look at some specifics and then the bigger picture, which is about more than fixing infrastructure.

Flood control

A 2018 review by NZ Rivers Group of Hawke’s Bay flood protection schemes, as part of a national review, estimated a net present value benefit of over $28.8 billion.

The largest component of our regional flood control is the Heretaunga Plains Flood Control and Drainage Scheme which protects Napier and Hastings cities and the highly productive land in their vicinity – 157 kilometres of stop banks, with a replacement value of $152 million, costing $7.5 million annually to operation. (Data in this section from HBRC current Long Term Plan.)

But as the 2021-31 LTP stated: “The flood control schemes have substantially reduced the incidence of major flooding in Hawke’s Bay. As a result, many of the Hawke’s Bay public and businesses have little or no knowledge of the potential impact of a major flood on them and are not well prepared for the consequences should a major flood occur.”

HBRC actually modelled the economic losses that would occur with three major stop bank breaches at Roy’s Hill on the Ngaruroro River, Taradale and Moteo on the Tūtaekurī River within the Heretaunga Plains.

The table below summarises potential breach economic impacts CPI (Consumer Price Index) adjusted to 2020.

Unfortunately, we are now about to test the real world accuracy of such estimates!

To its credit HBRC, looking ahead at climate change, consulted and received endorsement for raising the stop banks in anticipation of more intense climate-induced rainfall events – aiming for security from a 500 year event instead of the existing 100 year event protection.

That work was only completed a few months ago on the Taradale stretch, notes HBRC Councillor Neil Kirton, and if it had not been done, “much of Taradale would now be in the ocean,” he says.

But this rebuild, begun in 2020, has been too slow in coming and Kirton wonders if the $20 million project would have been untaken if the Government had not provided $12.8 million of the funding as one of its Covid ‘shovel ready’ projects.

Kirton notes that even with the uplift, stop banks were over-topped, questioning “now what?” These protections cannot simply keep going higher, a point echoed by former HBRC Councillor and Chair Rick Barker. 

Both agree Plains protection – and in fact all flood control – will need a strategic re-think, starting with where people are allowed to live and including what land uses should occur in protected areas. And looking at more extensive drainage infrastructure, ‘spongy’ cities/areas (less hard surface, more wetlands), etc.

No one is suggesting walking away from the enormous ‘sunk investments’ already made in our low-lying lands. Says Kirton: “We’re here. We want to stay. But we need to pay the price.” Both Barker and Kirton insist we must stop making stupid decisions about the future.

Of course, it is our councils who decide where people live and development can occur. And these decisions appear dumber and dumber as councils race to build housing in known flood plains, Napier’s Te Awa area perhaps the most obvious example, but perhaps topped by Ngāti Kahungunu’s proposal to build 600 more homes nearby.

In 2008 I wrote a satirical BayBuzz article about a (fantasy) ‘Growing Under Water’ (GUW) strategy being hatched for Te Awa at NCC:“GUW envisions a partially submerged residential development with homes connected by meandering canals. Residents would leave their cars at the edge of the development, and use personal gondolas to pole around within the complex. Deluxe homes would have underwater viewing rooms to watch sea life purpose-bred for a life of entertainment in the complex by a rejuvenated Marineland. 

“Planners are dripping with excitement over the sustainability benefits of this approach — no carbon footprint within the village, a new lease on life for Marineland, and an estimated 175 new jobs for gondoliers, marine biologists, hydraulic engineers, water-proofing contractors and pump repair mechanics.”

We followed NCC’s progress with building homes below sea level with a 2011 article (also satirical) titled: City Under the Sea. It featured the illustration that we’ve recycled to open this article, which now deals with the real world, with hundreds of homes built in Te Awa in the meantime.

While it might be unfair to fault development and land use decisions made decades ago, when we still thought we could outmanoeuvre Mother Nature, there’s been no excuse in the last 30 years for knowingly putting people’s homes, lives and livelihoods at risk. 

And even less excuse for continue doing so.

Power

Our region’s elected officials have some say over managing our water. They have no say over managing our power (although the HB Power Consumers Trust does get to hand out a yearly dividend, which hardly constitutes oversight).

Power management lies with our region’s electricity distributor, Unison, and its supplier, Transpower.

As we now know all too well, a critical node in that system is the Redclyffe substation, a so-called Grid Exit Point (GXP) owned by Transpower. It sits astride the Tutaekuri River, in the Waiohiki area, protected by a stop bank … or so everyone thought.

At this substation (as with Fernhill and Whakatū), Transpower hands-off about 30% of our incoming electricity to Unison, whose substations and grid network then distribute it to our homes and businesses throughout the Hastings district and Napier.

When Redclyffe was planned and built in 1927, we didn’t yet have global warming deniers. We did have floods, so the facility was built to withstand a 1 in 100 year flood. One would have imagined that over the years power planners have cogitated over ways of mitigating the risk of this location, from re-location to additional bunds around the site to installing redundant pathways for their electricity to be routed into the area.

In 2020 Trustpower did undertake a ‘desktop’ review of the flood risks to its infrastructure around the country, now with climate change entering the equation. 

The review identified Redclyffe as a risk facility and Transpower began planning mitigation measures for a dozen such locations, with work to occur in the 2025-2030 time frame. It needs permission from the Commerce Commission to spend the estimated $109 million required. So, plans on a shelf. Reporter Tom Pullar-Strecker has detailed all this in an excellent 16 Feb Stuff article.

For now, with the ‘water over the stop bank’, Transpower is left with clean-up and band aids, and owes Hawke’s Bay a huge apology.

In the days after the cyclone struck, it must be said that Transpower and Unison frontline workers strove mightily in very dangerous conditions to sort the problem and build the needed work-arounds. 

How prepared were Unison planners? 

Unison prepares comprehensive Asset Management planning documents, which include Risk Assessment. In its latest risk discussion for Hawke’s Bay, Unison focuses on potential earthquake, tsunami and volcanic ash. Listed in the ‘Other’ category are major storm events including cyclones, and flooding.

Unison notes: “…it is recognised from studies of major mishaps around the world, e.g. Three Mile Island USA, that Unison needs to protect itself from a combination of unforeseen design, operational and asset management decisions, which can combine in an obscure manner and lead to a major incident and prolonged outages.”

Reflecting this, in 2019 Unison had commissioned an independent resilience report to determine how well Unison, as a ‘Lifeline Utility’, was prepared to cope with natural disasters, such as major earthquakes and extreme weather, and significant network and system failures. 

The report noted good progress with aspects of risk reduction, such as seismic strengthening and the provision of an Alternative Operations Centre in which to base a disaster recovery response. It also identified a “lack of documentation detailing network vulnerability studies that quantified the potential impact on the network of various extreme event scenarios or major asset and asset system failures.” This was signalled as the main area for improvement. 

An updated Unison 2022-32 Asset Management Plan reports:

“… Unison is undertaking a Capability Project to better understand the vulnerability of its network to extreme events. The objective of this project is to develop a sustainable, network vulnerability assessment model that can be used to quantify the potential damage of various “extreme events” on Unison’s assets and asset systems and the likely consequences of this damage, focused predominantly on Unison’s ability to supply its customers. The project is progressing, and a “proof of concept”, Hawke’s Bay earthquake scenario was selected to initially develop the model’s required functionality and outputs. Once the model’s outputs have been identified and validated, additional scenarios will be incorporated.” 

Unfortunately, an analysis that is a bit behind the curve. That said, might a ‘Cyclone Gabrielle’ scenario provide better ‘real-world’ data for this exercise?

Now what – recovery, then re-set

The Government has announced its structure – the Cabinet-level committee Extreme Weather Recovery Committee – and initial funding of $300 million for addressing Cyclone Gabrielle recovery, with more to come. Minister Stuart Nash has been designated as ‘Ministerial lead’ for our region, with MP and Associate Agriculture Minister Meka Whaitiri playing a key role in the agricultural recovery.

But this is focused on picking up the pieces and restoring basic service functionality.

It is not yet clear what the ‘re-set’ process with look like, once national and local decisionmakers begin to face our long-term climate change future. And locally, it’s not readily apparent where ‘break from the past’, paradigm-busting thinking will come from … not likely from council bureaucracies. 

The re-set process, as we cited AUT Chancellor Rob Campbell opening this analysis, cannot be built around old paradigms.

Rick Barker as MP held the Civil Defence Ministerial portfolio from 2005-08, when central government first set about upgrading and making consistent civil defence planning across the nation. In the present situation, he warns against “rear view mirror” planning, a habit he sees ingrained in governmental bureaucracies at all levels (as well as most elected officials). ‘We’ll do what we’ve done before, only better.’

Linked to this, he warns against misjudging the scale, pace (“it’s geometric”) and nature of change our future planning must anticipate. “We need to make a quantum leap in our planning,” necessitated by climate change. Planning predicated upon past experience he likens to “walking into a casino and placing our entire life savings on Red-7!” 

Along the same lines, Mayor Alex Walker says the region will need “brave decision-making”. Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst says we need a deep community discussion about risk. Walker commented to BayBuzz, “We need to accelerate big picture, inter-generational thinking” about the future direction of Hawke’s Bay.”

In practical terms, what might this mean?

For starters, Barker, whose fervent about climate change, would throw out the window all the old ‘1 in 100 year’ assumptions. The very assumptions presently made by experts from Transpower to NIWA.

For example, take the NIWA report on projected climate change impacts for Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti, prepared in 2020. This included projections of rainfall events throughout the region in ‘mid-century’ (2031-2050). 

For example, at Glengarry in Napier, for 100-year events, the average rainfall in 12-hours was projected to rise from a historical 176 mm in 12-hour event and 244mm in 24-hour event to 189mm and 260mm respectively in ‘mid-century’. With a maximum 5-day rainfall across the year averaging 144.8mm. 

Cyclone Gabrielle makes those projections seem absurd. Numerous measures throughout most-affected parts of the region showed 12-hour rainfall exceeding 500, 600 and even 700mm. 

Climate scientists warn that each 1-degree centigrade rise in the global temperature adds 7% more water to the atmosphere … and it will fall with intensity. It would appear we must refresh our models if they are to be used for serious future planning!

More accurate, future-focused science aside, another essential planning goal must be redundancy. We simply cannot be so reliant on stop banks (our major Red-7 bet), any single power station … or even on one mode of communication! 

If the bulk of our region’s population and production is to live on low-lying land, we must plan a far more comprehensive network for channelling and pumping storm-inflicted water to the sea, lessen our urban non-permeable surfaces (more urban ‘sponges’/wetlands) and hugely importantly, support more ambitious initiatives for holding soil, silt and water in place – out of our streams and rivers – in our river catchments.

As for power redundancy, Unison’s ten-year asset management plans show hundreds of upgrade and maintenance projects – across the cost spectrum – on the drawing boards. Many of these relate to improving connectivity amongst the various nodes in the system, precisely to move electricity around the region in case of more localised power failures. 

As noted earlier, Unison crews worked hard on the ground to establish emergency work-arounds to accomplish this. We might expect Unison execs to take a fresh look at their prioritising of redundancy projects … their pace and funding levels. Perhaps we need to sacrifice a few years of our treasured dividend payments from the HB Power Consumers Trust!

As for communications redundancy, no one has been able to justify this nation’s lack of an Emergency Radio Network to communicate to the public in disasters like Cyclone Gabrielle. Personally, I just assumed that all nations on the planet had such a rudimentary tool. Not us, our (another) Red-7 bet is placed entirely on mobile communications and the internet. 

Visit the national civil defence website – getready.govt.nz – to see how ludicrously unready we are to communicate in an emergency. I’m sure you’ve all heard of ‘Emergency Mobile Alerts’ (a service available on some mobile phones, and no landlines). Here’s their Q&A response to loss of phone towers or power: “Emergency Mobile Alert may not work if mobile phone towers are damaged or if there is a power outage. For this reason, you must also rely on other information sources.” As we now know, good luck with that!

In a sense, building in redundancy, while imperative, is still somewhat of a band-aid solution to addressing future need.

A more fundamental response must include discussion and decisions around spatial planning for the region – what activities, homes, infrastructure will be permitted where? – and ultimately, diversification – how can we lessen our dependency on weather-critical economic activity?

These are huge topics to be explored in future BayBuzz articles.

The Government is requiring regional spatial plans in the future and our mayors insist to a person that they will deliver one. Will it restrict building homes in flood plains? Even if they’re to be built by iwi for low-income families? What about the hundreds already there? Watch this highly political space!

Diversifying our regional economy should fall in the bailiwick of our new Regional Economic Development Agency, just getting off the ground. 

Scales Corp, owner of major grower Mr Apple (which just had 28% of its land damaged), recently announced it was shifting its investment focus to ‘global protein’. Managing director Andy Borland reassures that the decision was not a move away from horticulture and the company remained committed to the division: “It’s not about exiting, it’s just about prioritising our investment and where the best opportunities are at the moment.” 

What other agribiz investment decisions might/should be re-prioritised?

Another critical space to watch as we plan for the new normal.