At loggerheads: Manuka Place homeowner Daniel Watts (right) claims recent signs of subsidence at his house were caused by former Whangārei mayor Stan Semenoff, who denies it. Photo / Michael Cunningham
At loggerheads: Manuka Place homeowner Daniel Watts (right) claims recent signs of subsidence at his house were caused by former Whangārei mayor Stan Semenoff, who denies it. Photo / Michael Cunningham
A Whangārei resident fears his home might be condemned like a neighbour’s if earthworks at former mayor Stan Semenoff’s adjacent housing development are allowed to continue unchecked.
But Semenoff rejected allegations made against him, claiming the resident bought his property knowing full well the unstable state of the land and the demise of the house opposite.
Primary school teacher Daniel Watts, also a former One Party candidate for Whangārei, bought his 1970s weatherboard house on 1012sq m section on Manuka Pl in April 2021 for $540,000.
It is directly opposite a house at number 11 owned by Tony Stringer, who had lived there for 16 years when in August 2019 the land around it subsided and large cracks suddenly appeared in the brickwork. Whangārei District Council deemed it too unsafe for occupants.
An Earthquake Commission report later confirmed a land failure, which had irrevocably damaged the Stringer house, was due to a combination of rain and work done at Semenoff’s development.
A house at 11 Manuka Place - directly opposite Daniel Watts' - was condemned as unsafe to live in during August, 2019. It is now heavily overgrown and fenced to keep people out. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Watts claimed his house had also recently shown signs of subsidence that he believes is due to earthworks Semenoff did on his housing development one Saturday about three weeks ago.
Watts believed the work Semenoff did further destabilised a bank he’d earlier dug into and that he also allegedly removed some drainage mechanisms that council had insisted he install after the slip near number 11.
Semenoff believed the claims were due to a disagreement they previously had involving another Manuka Place resident.
The work he had done was on a stable slope some distance from Watts’ property. He denied interfering with the drainage. Plastic sheeting to which Watts had specifically referred, washed out “way back during Cyclone Gabrielle”, Semenoff said.
He’d cleared out a “filthy” sediment drain beneath that slope - as he was regularly required by council to do, he said.
Watts pointed to damage that he claimed had appeared at the rear of his house within a week of Semenoff’s activities: cracks in the eaves under his roof, a 3cm-4cm gap that had opened up between some concrete stairs and the weatherboard wall, cracks in recent paint work along the interior of rear windows, and stretch marks in the linoleum floor of a lean-to pantry.
Daniel Watts claims the linoleum in his pantry began to stretch apart only a matter of days after earthworks done by Stan Semenoff at his adjacent housing development. Photo / Michael Cunningham
He claimed Semenoff sometimes worked at weekends and at nights - when residents wouldn’t be able to alert the council to any concerns.
So worried about what might become of his house, Watts had taken a week’s stress leave from work to see what could be done.
“Insurance has pretty much said, ‘You can’t prove it’s him - it could be subsidence or vibrations from heavy machinery’. "
The insurance company had confirmed it would likely only cover sudden, large-scale, damage.
Stan Semenoff claims Daniel Watts and other residents are adding to the risk of land subsidence in the area by draining roof water into the subdivision site rather than directing it onto the road at Manuka Place. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Watts claimed that before buying his property, council had assured him there wouldn’t be any houses built over the fence. Semenoff would need to do some major retaining work first. That relative isolation had appealed to him in buying the house. He also got a LIM report, Watts said.
He wanted the development stopped and some recompense from Semenoff for the alleged damages to date. He couldn’t afford a lawyer and was just outside the threshold for legal aid but hoped a lawyer might be willing to fight his case for free.
Semenoff rejected all the allegations saying Watts bought his property at number 10 knowing full well the unstable state of the land and the demise of the house opposite.
Asked why he was taking the risk of building a housing development on land he knew was unstable, Semenoff said, “Some gotta have what it takes and some don’t”.
“Some gotta have what it takes and some don’t”: Former Whangarei mayor Stan Semenoff's response when asked why he would risk developing unstable land. Photo / Michael Cunningham
He had employed “highly-paid” professionals to inspect the site as necessary, in fact an engineer and lawyer were there that day, he said.
The only work he’d done recently near Watts’ house was to mow gorse, Semenoff said.
He believed Watts and other neighbouring residents were contributing to subsidence risk themselves - claiming that they were draining roof water onto the subdivision land instead of directing it onto the road in Manuka Place.
In Semenoff’s view, Watts wasn’t “lily white” and although he denied it, had also contributed to fly tipping on the subdivision land by dumping green waste, Semenoff claimed.
“If he wants to play silly beggars with me I’ll get a digger and dump it (the green waste) back onto his front lawn.”
