Will Kāpiti declare a climate change emergency?

Work on the Wharemauku block seawall.

Kāpiti Coast District Council councillors will be considering a motion to declare a climate change emergency for the district.

The motion, before tomorrow's council meeting, is being moved by mayor K Gurunathan and seconded by deputy mayor Janet Holborow, both of who are members of Greater Wellington Regional Council's climate change subgroup on community-led coastal adaptation.

It notes the council and communities are facing increasingly significant and prohibitive costs to manage the impacts of climate change.

It calls on Greater Wellington Regional Council to increase the resources allocated to its coastal adaptation climate change programme specifically towards the community-led coastal adaptation project for the 2019/20 financial year.

And calls on central government to create a National Climate Change Adaptation Fund as recommended by Local Government New Zealand.

"While this declaration does not carry any statutory or legal weight it provides a political framework for council's existing work stream on its climate change and adaptation strategy," Mr Gurunathan said.

"The declaration recognises our communities are facing an iceberg of significant costs now, and increasingly over the coming decades, from coastal erosion and floods."

These, he said, include:

Coastal erosion -

The 900m Paekākāriki seawall budgeted to cost about $17m.
The temporarily consented 170m Wharemauku block seawall has cost $600,000 with additional monitoring costs over the next seven years.
GWRC requires KCDC to secure a long-term solution which has been costed at $1.2m. There is a further 4km of beachfront properties south of the Wharemauku block seawall with a series of failing seawalls.
While the funding of a continuous seawall along this 4km has not been costed in detail, it is expected to be around $38m.
Along the 100m wide section stretching along Kāpiti's 42km coastline, there are an estimated 1800 properties potentially facing coastal erosion. These properties, with an estimated value of $1.6 billion, are also some of the district's highest ratepayers.

Inland floods -

More than 6000 inland properties are in flood-prone zones. Council has identified more than 300 stormwater projects over 60 years costing $250m.
The Niwa Climate Change Report for the Wellington Region August 2017 predicts climate change-related impacts on Kāpiti with a 15 per cent increase in winter rain delivered in short but very intense falls.
This coupled with Kāpiti's topography means increasing investment in pumping stations. Each cost about $4m with the Kena Kena project costing $7m.