Matt Bond says another driveway on the bay over is failing – yet the council still went ahead and gave consent for the Hekepapa Bay driveway. Photo / Anthony Phelps
Matt Bond says another driveway on the bay over is failing – yet the council still went ahead and gave consent for the Hekepapa Bay driveway. Photo / Anthony Phelps
Neighbours looking across a small Marlborough Sounds bay were shocked to notice native trees being cleared for a zigzagging driveway. They knew it was a risky design, and it turned out they were right. Local Democracy Reporter Maia Hart reports.
Rellings Bay is filled with holiday homes. It means for much of the winter the small bay in Queen Charlotte Sound is relatively empty.
It was Labour Day Weekend 2018 when Belinda Davies returned to her family bach in the Sounds.
The construction of a 680-metre driveway that twisted through the bush had started over the winter, Davies said.
“We were absolutely horrified that this had happened under our noses,” she said.
“We immediately jumped in the car and headed into Blenheim, and tried to get an appointment with someone [at council] who could shed some light on it.”
Consent for a 680-metre driveway above a house on Queen Charlotte Dr was granted in 2018. Photo / Anthony Phelps
She managed to speak to a person on the council’s monitoring team who told her the resource consent had already been granted. This was despite a council staffer having warned against it.
The driveway homeowner already had access by road and boat to the property, although the consent application said this was not “ideal”, as that road access meant using a track on a neighbouring property and walking along the foreshore.
While it was not to be misconstrued as a neighbours-at-war situation – because the homeowner rightly obtained consent – none of Davies’ neighbours ever got to have their say, because the Marlborough District Council chose not to publicly notify it.
“All we could do was keep an eye on it and make sure they complied with the conditions of the consent,” Davies said.
Peter Thomson, left, and Matt Bond have properties on Queen Charlotte Dr. Photo / Anthony Phelps
‘Shock horror’ among neighbours
Queen Charlotte Dr homeowner Peter Thomson said when construction started there was “shock horror” among residents of the bay, known by them as Hekepapa Bay. He described it as a “scar” in the native bush.
Tour boats used to come into the bay, to see an example of some of the untouched native environment that blanketed the Sounds. But the boats had stopped coming, Thomson said.
Thomson was concerned about how the consent was handled, so he took the matter to the Ombudsman. He thought there should have been an external review into the processing of the resource consent, rather than the internal one the council chose to undertake instead.
“It was concern from neighbours that started it, because they were chopping down mature native trees and bushes,” Thomson said.
“My neighbours made some very sensible complaints and inquiries with the council, but received very little in response.”
Plans lodged with the Marlborough District Council for a driveway constructed on Queen Charlotte Dr in 2018. Photo / Marlborough Express
The risk to the environment
Matt Oliver, an environmental scientist at the council, provided technical advice on the application back in 2018. He argued the driveway was “unnecessary and inappropriate” given the terrain.
The three-metre-wide driveway required excavating 1000 cubic metres of soil, said to be Kenepuru Steepland soils.
That soil, a yellow-brown silt, had a high clay content and was known for having high erosion potential.
His advice said there had been multiple instances where soil had disposed into the marine environment as a result of “these kinds of activities”.
The Marlborough Sounds was an “iconic landscape”, he said, and part of that attraction was the ability to view undisturbed hill slopes from the water, yet it was likely the driveway would be visible from the sea.
The consent was granted anyway. Two severe weather events followed, and the driveway slipped.
Thomson’s complaint to the Ombudsman alleged the council failed to notify the original consent, place weight on its own technical advice, failed to critically evaluate the relevant technical information, and protect the Sounds environment and safeguard the interests of neighbouring properties.
“Now, because of climate change, these things become so much more important,” Thomson said.
“I think in hindsight they [council] downplayed the risk to the environment.
The driveway pictured after the August 2022 flooding. Photo / LDR
“And as it has turned out, it really was downplayed. The events in July 2021 and August 2022 are showing us that we’ve got an even more fragile environment than we ever thought we had, so it’s going to be a major issue to deal with in the future.
“The other thing is the erosion. The concern is the sea floor. People have been concerned for some time about sediment, and run off, and all sorts of things destroying a relatively unique environment.”
Neighbour Matt Bond pointed to a similar driveway a bay over – which was about 50 years old and starting to fail, and often slipped.
“There’s always been large rainfall events in this area, and people are aware of the impacts of that,” Bond said.
He said the generation before him spent years planting native bush in the area – just to have it chopped down for the driveway to go through.
“You sit there and go ‘what has changed in 50 years, and why would you allow a new road to go in?’ But not just that... it wouldn’t be publicly notified?
“The council needs to make sure they take this on board, to make sure this mistake, and we can call it a mistake, doesn’t happen again.”
Neighbours continued to contact the council about issues on the driveway, like in October last year when Belinda Davies emailed about a major slip.
The driveway was completely blocked off by “tonnes of soil, uprooted trees and rocks” and spilt into one of the few remaining areas of intact bush on the property, she told the council.
Adverse effects ‘more than minor’, Ombudsman says
Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier told the council in a letter early last year, also provided as an extract to Thomson, that regeneration and restoration of the “previously undisturbed natural landscape”, following the driveway’s construction, might not readily occur.
This was due to certain features of the driveway, including its steepness, the number of switchbacks cutting across the face of the coastal landscape, the height of the “battered” banks above and below, and the erosion-prone soil type, Boshier said.
“Earthwork cuts in the landscape across the width and length of the property concerned are clearly visible in photos taken from a boat some distance from the coastline,” Boshier said.
The driveway, pictured after the August 2022 flooding. Photo / LDR
Based on that analysis, Boshier thought adverse effects that would arise from the driveway were likely to be more than minor, not likely to be temporary, or addressed by vegetation, and surrounding property owners should have been notified.
While he did not think it was unreasonable for the council to undertake its own internal review, rather than external, he thought the council’s response to Thomson’s concerns was unreasonable and failed to adequately examine “relevant decisions” of the consent, including its notification and assessment of effects.
No recommendations were made to the council given the “complexity”, but he did suggest the council consider whether further action was required to address the deficiencies in its internal review, and to prevent similar failures in the future.
The ongoing monitoring
Marlborough District Council consents and compliance group manager Gina Ferguson said there was regular communication with the consent holder to monitor the driveway.
This included regular maintenance updates provided to the council. Following the August 2022 flood, there was a remedial action inspection at the property.
She thought the council’s internal review was adequate.
“The August flood event caused a significant number of slips throughout the Marlborough Sounds.”
She said slips in the Sounds were not limited to “land disturbance areas”.
“Roading and natural bush slip failures also occurred due to the significant rainfall.
“I do not consider the occurrence of a slip supports a conclusion that there was an issue with the resource consent.”
A study recently released to the council found the majority of the near-8000 landslides in Marlborough during the 2021 and 2022 flooding happened where “humans have been messing with the land”.
Damage to an older access road after the August 2022 flood. Photo / Anthony Phelps
Despite indigenous forest making up nearly half the vegetation in the Marlborough Sounds, and copping some of the heaviest rain, landslides in these areas were “under-represented” in the weather events.
That study was “significant”, according to one councillor, who said it raised issues about how the council would handle resource consents and future developments in the Marlborough Sounds.
Ferguson said as a condition of the consent, revegetation must be established to mitigate the visual impacts of the driveway.
Should a similar resource consent application come across the council table, it would be assessed on the individual details of the proposal, and an assessment of the effects, Ferguson said.
Any future consent would be notified if adverse effects were likely to be more than minor, she said.
The consent holder was approached for comment but said the processing of the consent was a matter for the council – and every requirement was ticked off from their side of the application.
“I believe the process was extremely thorough,” he said.
