KEY POINTS:
A section of one of Auckland's most exclusive streets has been cordoned off after the discovery of numerous clifftop cracks which are threatening services to a number of luxury homes.
The cracks were discovered at the upper end of Cliff Rd in St Heliersduring a $1 million project to try to stabilise part of the clifftop, which has been eroding for a number of years.
Auckland City Council transport committee chairman Ken Baguley said that while the cracks were not directly threatening homes, services such as water, sewerage, stormwater, phone, power, gas and property access were potentially at risk.
As a result, a section of the road between the Springcombe Rd intersection and Achilles Pt - where All Black coach Graham Henry lives - has been closed to the public.
The Achilles Pt Lookout, Ladies Bay and Gentlemans Bay have also been closed while further investigations are carried out.
Mr Baguley said it was not yet clear why the cracks had appeared - it could be anything from heavy traffic and general clifftop movement to a dry summer that had created cracks in the earth.
Engineering consultants Tonkin and Taylor have been called in and will spend the next two weeks looking at the stability of the land and what needs to be done.
Part of that investigation will include drilling 10 boreholes in the area and using specialised equipment to test the soil and rock bed.
Mr Baguley said work was already under way further down the road to stabilise a 100m section of the cliff that had been slipping away for a number of years.
He envisaged that the work might now need to be extended 200m along the cliff towards Achilles Pt.
"The initial assessment shows that there may be a need to stabilise the cliff outside properties 61 to 69 to ensure that all residents continue to have access to services."
Mr Baguley said the extra work could add $2 million to the cliff stabilisation project and the council might need to reassess what vehicles were able to drive along the road once the work was completed.
If reports found that heavy vehicles such as buses had contributed in anyway to the instability, the council might decide to prevent them from driving along there in the future.
Mr Baguley said the council's main concern was keeping residents informed about what was happening and a meeting was held thisweek.
There are plans for future meetings once the initial investigative work has been completed.
"Although there are no current safety risks, our main priority is keeping people living in the street informed," he said.
So far residents seem happy with the information they have been given.
Mr Henry said he had "no concerns at all" about his home and communications with the council had been "100 per cent".
"We had a meeting with the council on Monday night and there were a lot of the engineers, etc - all the people who were dealing with this particular situation - and they were good.
"It's just a normal situation, really. They are just reinforcing the road and it's going to be a lot stronger for the future and that's all good stuff."
Mr Baguley said the stabilisation work was not expected to appear on LIM reports but would be recorded on a road report that would be available to potential home buyers.
