The Peters’ waterfront properties are on Seacliffe Ave and they applied to Auckland Council to build the 3.3m high and 8m wide wall at the bottom of the cliff where there was a collapse in the 1970s.
Their aim is to try to stabilise the land and prevent further erosion.
Construction of the new privately-funded sea wall at Belmont is progressing. This is rising beneath two homes on Seacliffe Ave. Photo / Carson Bluck
Staff from Auckland Stonemasons have been using trucks to take the run from their lay-down yard at Narrow Neck Beach carpark to the site beneath the cliffs.
The business has had a limited time to get materials to the site, only able to drive the course during extremely low tides this month and next month.
They are carting concrete, rocks and other materials to the site.
Independent hearing commissioners Peter Reaburn, Rebecca Skidmore and Nicki Williams decided in December 2022 to allow the scheme, supported by 12 parties, opposed by nine with one party neutral.
Ruth Ell of Environment Takapuna opposed the wall. Erosion was happening along the coastline, she told the commissioners, and landowners needed to accept that. She was concerned that the wall would encroach on public land for what, in her opinion, was for the applicants’ benefit only.
Auckland Council staff told the commissioners that erosion processes were natural and should be allowed to continue. They were unaware of any public complaints about the talus, safety or any request to remove the debris. That was a reference to metal from the old Westfield freezing works, taken to the site to try to stabilise the cliffs years ago.
How the seawall at Belmont is proposed to look once work is finished. For scale, images of people appear. The fence around the top of the wall is also shown. Photo / Auckland Council
The commissioners’ decision of December 12, 2022, said the talus was now about 20m wide, runs about 10m from the toe of the cliff and is about 5m high.
The commissioners visited the site and said the man-made elements of the talus were unsightly and had adverse effects on amenity and natural and coastal character.
The scale of construction of the new seawall at Belmont is clearly shown here. Photo / Carson Bluck
The rock masonry seawall will have an inbuilt staircase along the coastal margin within the boundaries of their properties and adjoining them.
Allen Peters told the commissioners that he and Barbara had lived at their Seacliffe Ave property since buying it in 2007 and they bought the neighbouring place in 2015.
A previous owner of their Seacliffe Ave home tried to build a substantial retaining wall of steel and concrete beams and columns from the Westfield freezing works, which was demolished last century.
The material was stacked at the top of the cliff at a neighbouring place in an attempt to stabilise the land.
Around 1972, a storm caused a big slip. The seaward lawns of both those Seacliffe Ave properties collapsed onto the foreshore below. A significant portion of the steel beams and concrete went with them.
Plans for the seawall at the time the application to build it were heard. Photo / Auckland Council
Over the years, the Peters had witnessed the steel beams, concrete slabs and steel cables at the bottom of the cliff being increasingly strewn out across the foreshore as tidal forces hit those materials, Allen Peters told the commissioners.
Overall, Ngāti Manuhiri supported the application in principle, the commissioners’ report said.
“We find that while proposed seawall will be an obviously man-made structure, contrasting with the cliffs behind, that adverse effect will not be substantial or visually dominating,” the commissioners decided.
Work is continuing over the summer to complete the job.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
