A plan for future housing in Hawke’s Bay has sparked controversy over its proposal to use productive food growing land and low lying flood risk areas.
The Heretaunga Plains spread over 300 square kilometres, from the hills of Hawke’s Bay out to the coastline, and much of the area is a patchwork of crops and farms covering the fertile food producing soils which have formed over millions of years.
Richard Gaddum formed the Save the Plains Group five years ago to try and protect the soils and prevent the urban sprawl from Hastings and Napier eating up the precious and productive land.
“They are very special because we’ve got the best soils in the world, I believe, for growing food… and we’ve got the best climate,” he said.
The National Policy Statement on High Productive Land became law in 2022. It aims to protect elite Class 1, 2 and 3 soils across the country.
So Gaddum was shocked to see Hastings’ and Napier’s urban development plans included nearly 365 hectares of those soils.
‘We can’t keep doing this’
“This sort of behaviour really can’t continue. We can’t keep doing this… Napier has done it and their land is all gone.
“It’s time for us to rethink this and move in a new direction, we build up, we don’t build out and we build on unproductive land. It just makes sense,” he said.
Councillor Neil Kirton also opposed the FDS, as he was concerned about houses being built in flood risk areas, such as a controversial site at Riverbend Rd in Napier, where a 660 house development was being proposed. It has flooded twice in three years and was a critical flood path for when the city’s stormwater system exceeded capacity.
But Napier City Council voted to keep the site in the strategy.
“I just cannot accept there has been sufficient analysis done of the proposal to ensure the flooding can be mitigated – it’s a fairy tale to believe that sort of mitigation can be put in place,” said Kirton.
Council planning and consenting decisions were now under scrutiny in the post-Cyclone Gabrielle coronial inquiry into 12 deaths.
Kirton worried that Hawke’s Bay councils were gambling with peoples’ lives by ignoring the flood risk of proposed new housing developments.
“The people in charge here, the councils, including the regional council, have got to get their heads together and make sure these things don’t happen again,” he said.
But Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise was confident the flood risk could be mitigated for the Riverbend Road site.
“It’s actually at resource consent stage already in terms of the level of information that’s been provided, that’s why I felt that we did need to include it as part of the consultation on the future development strategy,” she said.
As the region’s population continued to grow, local councils were grappling with where to expand residential areas.
So, where to build?
A development that both Gaddum and the mayor agreed was a good example of a new Greenfield site was the Mission Hills project. The 207 hectares of farmland – above Mission Estate Winery – was home to a new development of up to 800 homes, away from the fertile soils of the Heretaunga Plains.
Wise pointed to that as evidence the council was listening to local concerns, and said it was also looking at building up, not just out.
“We are also very focused on intensification in existing urban areas, however to meet our total growth requirements we do also need to have potential greenfield sites in the mix,” she said.
But Save the Plains Group was calling for the FDS to be scrapped.
“If we keep going on the way we are our food production areas are going to shrink, and the ultimate end scenario is we are going to have to import food to feed ourselves – and that is absolute nonsense,” said Gaddum.
He urged the public to educate themselves on the Future Development Strategy and have their say before public submissions closed on December 23.
By Alexa Cook of rnz.co.nz
