The Ministry of Education will talk to Waitaki Boys’ High School representatives shortly about how to respond to coastal erosion devouring almost half a metre of school grounds every year.
A 2019 Niwa report shows four hotspots along the Waitaki coastline are being eroded at a rate of between 10cm and 1.3m each year. In front of the school, 40cm of foreshore is disappearing each year.
The ministry says it is drawing up an action plan based on an engineering report it has commissioned and will discuss that with the school’s leadership, most likely next week.
This week, Ministry of Education infrastructure and digital leader Scott Evans said it had recently received the final version of the report by engineering firm Beca and was reviewing it before presenting it to the school.
"We have a meeting scheduled with Waitaki Boys’ High School during these school holidays, noting that we have already discussed a draft version of the report with them some time ago.
"The information in the report will help guide decision-making in response to current and future coastal erosion."
Satellite images of the shoreline in front of the school, taken over a period of eight years, showed its playing field was progressively being lost to the sea.
The other erosion hotspots are Katiki Beach, Beach Rd and Kakanui.
This week, the Otago Regional Council (ORC) clarified that its data-gathering tools for planning how to respond to erosion along the coastline were limited to keeping tabs on what was happening and keeping up to date with climate change forecasts.
"We will continue to review shoreline positions and evaluate projections," ORC natural hazards acting manager Simon Robinson said.
"We will also take into account revised sea-level projections, as these become available".
In 2012, ORC conducted a pulsed laser survey of the full Otago coastline.
"[This increased] our understanding of current coastal positions and [expanded] data sets that support our ability to investigate and monitor change."
This work would help the council get more accurate estimates of likely erosion and enable it to plan to tackle or adapt to it.
