608 - Sneaky Bubbles - Sam and Mawera

So what are the flooding problems that you're managing in the Bay of Plenty?

Well, the whole region has definitely got a bunch of issues around sea level rise, these big inundation events that we keep having with the weather patterns changing, with vertical land movements and unstable soil around our coastal areas.

So kind of quite similar to what's happening in South Dunedin in terms of that, you know, from from like those low lying areas, through to the coast, same kind of issues.

And what is Dunedin doing right, that attracted the attention of people from around the country, because for the people in South Dunedin, I'm pretty sure they're not thinking it's being done right.

No, and I get that because it's such a, there's a couple of different problems that happen.

One of them is that the aging infrastructure is going to take a generation to replace.

That is the biggest problem and everybody wants it replaced now, but they don't want their house removed so that the new pipes can be put down.

So it's such a major issue.

They've got So issues around the same thing that's happening all around Aotearoa, which is an aging infrastructure that has been built over, that is just going to be such a drama to replace.

They've got to figure out where and how to contain the water, because like the Bay of Plenty, it's from inundation events that the big problem occurs, where there's just the volume, the sheer volume of rain comes in, floods, and then goes out again.

But it's how to keep it contained while the getting out again part can be resolved.

So they've got a really good plan.

And what I really appreciated about them is the level of community engagement.

And I don't think that councils always do that particularly well.

But what I saw from the DCC is really really good community engagement but of course everyone's always going to be unhappy no one's ever happy like people are always very quick to blame blame the council but of course these people have inherited a problem not by their own design if they were given the opportunity to design it themselves it would be very different from the design that we're currently living with and the same can be said here in the eastern bay

I don't know if you saw the front page of the ODT yesterday that had you on it, but the story beneath your story,

did

you see that one?

I did, and I laughed out loud at that, not because of, like, they were trying to make it seem like it was a ridiculous thing that had to happen in Gore, but I think sometimes newspapers have, especially in this day and age, they report stories for clickbait, not necessarily for informing.

And I think that's a good example of one of those kind of stories.

It's not the entire area that has to be raised three meters.

it's small little pockets of places that are so low-lying that they have to be not only lifted to bring them up to whatever the normal is now, but also future-proofed.

So

we should say, it was a picture of some people in Gore, some builders or someone in Gore, standing beside some poles that marked out where the floor level had to be, and they were sort of saying, we're going to have to climb up a mountain to get into our house, this sort of stuff, and...

The headline is Noah's Ark Gore Flood Zone Panned.