Window to focus on area’s critical issues

The 2015 South Dunedin floods should have been a wake-up call and a catalyst for front-footing climate adaptation. PHOTO: ODT FILES

Last week the Otago Daily Times published an opinion piece by Dunedin City Councillor Andrew Whiley suggesting that Forbury Park is not viable for a proposed housing development - mooting that Bathgate Park would be more suitable.

I welcome these views - but I don’t agree.

It’s high time we had a discussion about locating new housing in South Dunedin, superseding the scientifically outdated notion of full retreat due to rising sea water levels.

Poor housing stock and stormwater infrastructure, sea level rise and coastal erosion are key issues that can be resolved using regenerative thinking.

The current shortage of housing, caused by decades of central Government planning deficits, means it’s likely we will need multiple sites for new developments. So turning our attention to where and how we might resolves the housing shortage is a welcome public conversation.

South Dunedin has climate challenges, but it also has large, open spaces suitable for regeneration and development — and a community who cherish where they live and who don’t want to move. For many years the residents here have felt largely forgotten and overlooked as Octagon-centric development and debates have taken precedence.

We are still paying the price of previous short-sighted decisions which have led to the current scenario, including toxic dumping and subsequent contamination of the all-important protective sand dunes at St Kilda.

The 2015 floods should have been a wake-up call and a catalyst for front-footing climate adaptation. Instead, for a mix of reasons, the debate immediately became one about full retreat of the people who live here, causing them great anxiety and a sense of marginalisation in their own city.

Since then, the science has revealed more - we now know, thanks to GNS, that an adaptation strategy is possible.

So we now have a window of opportunity to keep the spotlight on the southern part of the city, and seize that opportunity.

It will take creativity, collaboration and a willingness to make some intelligent assumptions about expected sea level rise — and adaptive planning to be able to cope nimbly with the unpredictability of climate change. The current science would suggest using a baseline of 1m sea level rise over the next 100 years. That could be changed as the science evolves, but at least we would have a starting point.

What it doesn’t need is more reports, and a lack of urgency. Covid has shown us the value of adaptive planning, requiring us to have flexible responses, depending on different scenarios.

Climate change is much the same: we could continue to argue about the likely sea level rise for another decade, or wait to finalise detailed plans that could be redundant by the time it comes to implementation. In doing so, we lose the chance to be in charge of our own destiny.

I am certain that somebody somewhere will end up paying considerable sums of money on South Dunedin — either front-footing a world-leading example of climate change adaptation or cleaning up reactively after another inevitable weather-related event.

The time to act is now: we have a coalition of the willing supporting a scientifically sound innovative new development at Forbury Park, supported in principle by central Government and able to attract central funding so as to take the burden off ratepayers.

The suggested use of Bathgate Park is short-sighted and does not address the main issue of flooding.

It is important to realise that from recent Otago Regional Council testing over a much wider scope of investigation in South Dunedin that sea water level movement up and down is only translated proportionally as a very minor change of groundwater level for the majority of South Dunedin, so is not the main problem.

Forbury Park is a viable location and has been identified as surplus land by Harness Racing New Zealand.

An ideal scenario, in my view, is a private development that enables substandard housing to be replaced with affordable, climate-adaptive housing and in doing so, also resolves pressing social and ecological issues.

This window of opportunity is finite:

• The Government recently announced a $3billion infrastructure development fund to support housing solutions.
• Acclaimed architect Gary Todd has come up with a credible, well-developed plan for part of Forbury Park involving relocatable, climate-adaptive houses built 3m above the ground. The proposal has the backing of Jasmax and other infrastructure heavyweights. These outfits don’t put their weight and international reputation behind proposals that are not evidenced by good science and engineering.
• The current Government has a strong ambition to provide wrap-around business models to facilitate financial capability and home ownership.
• Central Government support would add considerable value to the funds local government has already sunk into projects aimed at mitigating South Dunedin’s climate challenges via the South Dunedin Futures Project, and the Coast Plan work.
• There is the potential to truly co-ordinate decontamination of the sand dunes; there are appropriate engineering solutions for the precarious sea wall at St Clair and exciting new roading techniques to enable surface water draining; community venues, including sports grounds and clubs, could be relocated; and there are stormwater solutions to mitigate flooding from the hills which surround South Dunedin.

Nay-sayers are sceptical about the ability to provide a climate-proof long-term solution.

The trick is to work with the natural environment, not against it, as has been done previously.

Mr Todd’s proposal does just that. It involves reinstating Forbury Park as a wetland, which could act as a sort of storage facility in times of heavy rain. Run-off from the hills and the flat could flow easily into such a wetland, increasing local biodiversity.

Ngai Tahu is supportive in principle, valuing ecological regeneration and the opportunity to provide greater visibility of the shared histories of the wetlands. Multiple other stakeholders including the South Dunedin Community Network are also on board.

In a strongly worded letter to Housing Minister Megan Woods on April 15 this year, Minister David Parker says of Mr Todd’s Forbury Park proposal:

"Something needs to be done for South Dunedin. The area needs a vision and a path forward and this project could be a catalyst to find a way forward for South Dunedin.

"My instinct is that this project has significant potential in its own right but could also be a catalyst for resolving the wider issues in South Dunedin."

In 2016, a year after devastating floods, South Dunedin was identified as “urgently” needing a fast-tracked urban development process, when then-Labour leader Andrew Little visited.

Changes to the urban development laws he announced during that visit, and passed last July, were designed with South Dunedin top of mind.

Now let’s just get on with it.