Earth to Kirk: Junk Science makes Bad Policy

There is an article headed "Dunes Crucial Defence" in Wednesday's (Jan 19, 2004) Christchurch Press 'Perspective', by Professor Bob Kirk. It's notable in several aspects. It defends and summarizes the current position of Environment Canterbury - a not surprising advocacy. It borders on the mischievious in conflating a Charteris bay tsunami damage photograph with discussion of Pegasus Bay foredunes. It neglects to differentiate tsunami effects based in the elementary classifications of source and destination. It glosses over the inconsistencies in both the extent and likely effectiveness of the dunes as a primary defence. And it omits entirely any reference to the practical effects of all this, as it relates to the current Catch-22 policy situation applying to Central Brighton development.

It is no new story, that New Brighton has seen better days. St Kilda, Melbourne had the same sort of reputation as does Central Brighton - seedy, run-down, and generally unattractive. A Brighton revitalisation project is, in broad terms, underway. But real revitalisation takes private capital, higher population density, the attraction and retention of higher-discretionary-income residents, and the emergence of services, facilities, retail, restaurants and other niches, to serve this population. This can be seen now at St Kilda, where the quirky retail strip has become a fashionable destination.

But back in struggling Brighton, apart from the Pier and the Library, little in the way of actual, on the ground revitalisation is apparent. The current event-based effort does attract day trippers with some spin-offs for the local retail scene. But, honestly, an essentially transient audience attracted by jugglers, clowns and buskers is no substitute for a more discriminating population of permanent residents who (together with the day visitors and a wider selection of events) can more readily support the sort of niche shops one finds in St Kilda - excellent art bookstores, the best gelato stand in Melbourne, European cakes and confectionery, a thriving range of slightly alternative retail, and all this interpersed with banks, insurance, property agents, telcos and restaurants. That is, of course, just an old seagull's vision. Jugglers and clowns are necessary for the contentedness of the wider population - ask any Age of Empires gamer. But, and this is the essential point, this revitalisation stuff cannot be done other than by the private sector. It is emergent rather than planned, and what emerges is more akin to a biological process than to bullet points on a Revitalisation Policy document.

So what's stopping a private-capital-funded Brighton renaissance? An unholy if perhaps unintentional combination of Council land-use policy and the continuing wrangle over the dunes and sea views. It can be seen as a classic Catch-22 - the present L3 zoning allows 10 metres high/three storeys. But the dunes (where they exist, of which more later) average 8 metres high, effectively cutting out sea views. Hence, there's no incentive for developers to build as things stand, and a glance along the narrow-dunes strip from Rawhiti Park south to Rodney Street will confirm that that's exactly what's happening. Nothing. It's hard to sell apartments with the pitch "You've just paid $650,000 for your unit. Here's your view - of glorious marram grass, sand and ice-plant".

The natural reaction of developers is being followed: applications for consents to move above the 10 metre mark, and a concomitant desire to lower the dunes. But the Council has decided, on the basis of staff advice, to think everything through slowly as a formal District Scheme change, rather than to decide cases quickly on their individual merits. This may have superficial appeal. But it is having an absolutely chillng effect on development - already financial difficulties are apparent amongst the backers of at least one project, and this can be explained by the sudden increase in the holding time needed between section purchase and start of building. In effect, by opting for a Scheme change and throwing the door open to a raft of Christchurch-wide objections, comments and discussion, the Council has imposed opportunity costs upon developers, which conceivably run to millions of dollars over the rather leisurely Scheme Change timeline. Hence the chill.

And what of those dunes, and their 'crucial defence' element? The City Council depends on Enviroment Canterbury for advice on this, and any changes of dune height need a consent from EC. The problem with the EC position of dune height is simple: if the dunes are 'crucial' as alleged, then what about the stretches where there aren't any (Central New Brighton, the Avon-Heathcote Estuary mouth) or where the height is substantially less than the fabled 8 metres? Surely, in those areas, there is no 'front line' of tsunami defence.

A tsunami, for the record (US Geological Survey definition) is "A sea wave of local or distant origin that results from large-scale seafloor displacements associated with large earthquakes, major submarine slides, or exploding volcanic islands." The two defining characteristics of tsunami are a long period (15 to 60 minutes) and very high energy.

So it is necessary to differentiate our tsunami. For, as history shows, the same tsunami can have a markedly different effect on different destination shores. And the source of a given tsunami is also critical in those effects. Let's characterise source as Near tsunami and Distant tsunami; and destination as Pegasus Bay, Estuary and Avon/Heathcote rivers or the Peninsula Harbours and Bays.

The effect of a tsunami, and hence the mitigation efforts which can reasonably be put in place, varies. If we place these in a matrix of Source and Destination, we can from historical tsunami run-up records see something of this variation.

Far Tsumani - Pegasus Bay
Run-ups (the recorded maximum height reached) have not exceeded 2 metres over 150 years. In Central Brighton (where no dunes have ever existed) there has been no significant damage caused by tsunami run-up.

Far Tsunami - Estuary and Avon/Heathcote rivers
Waves over the Moncks Bay road at mid-tide (May 1960, referred to by Brown and Weeber, in their 1992 publication "Geology of the Christchurch Urban Area") and many instances of the Avon holding up and back-flooding parts of the Spit and South Brighton, particularly at lunar high tides, and not only from tsunami.

Far Tsunami - Peninsula Harbours and Bays
Significant run-ups - 5-6 metre high waves in Lyttelton (August 1868, May 1960), Henry and Ann Bailey's Le Bons Bay house swept away (August 1868, Ogilvie, 'Picturing the Peninsula", 1992). Generally, large, destructive waves.

Notice that the effect on the Peninsular Bays is quite different? In general, according to Brown and Weeber, tsunami have "particularly strong effects in the harbours of Banks Peninsula" because of the seabed configuration. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that there is a substantial seabed gradient just outside the mouth of most of the eastern bays (such as Hickory, Le Bons and Little Akaloa). The regular NZ632 chart (Maritime map) shows this quite clearly. The rapid decrease in depth causes a tsunami to 'rear up' and break onshore. However, Pegasus Bay (especially the southern end) has a substantial bank of post-glacial sand (the Banner Bank) in the northward lee of the Peninsula, for some kilometres out to sea. The seabed depths decrease gradually toward land, and wave energy is partially dissipated by friction over this extended distance. Waves which do reach the beach tend not to break as much as slop.

Secondly, bays and harbours tend to focus and can amplify incoming waves - this is the 'embayment effect', where energetic waves act unpredictably in a confined space. Owners of Tory Channel (Marlborough Sounds) baches will have experienced akin to this effect when the fast ferries were introduced and before speed (and hence energy) restrictions were imposed. The ferrys' propulsion is from water jets, four in all, with 9000 Kw to power each one, moving tens of cubic metres per second of water. The energy from those jets manifested itself as waves which travelled along the channel bottom, then literally reared up onto the beach frontages, carrying with them rocks as big as 30cm across, and all manner of channel-bottom scourings. Multiply the energy by several thousand times, and place it in a tsunami situation: the embayment effect is a real killer. It is this effect which the 'Perspective' photograph depicted - in Charteris Bay. And hence the mischief: this is emphatically not the effect which occurs on the Brighton beach shore.

So much for Distant Tsunami. Spot the omission? No Near Tsunami has ever occurred. There is a substantial fault in Pegasus Bay, which could generate the vertical movement necessary for a tsunami. We simply don't know what might happen. But if the experience of New Guinea in July 1998 is anything to go by, there is little warning time available. A 7.1 magnitude quake in the fault system nearby, offshore, generated a series of 10 metre plus waves which had sufficient energy to overtop an entire 100 metre wide spit, wash several hundred houses into a lagoon, and which waves were still sufficiently energetic even after that to penetrate another 1.3 km inland. (source: NOAA photographs and text captions, accessed from the Tsunami Runup database)

It's a fair bet that a similar event in Pegasus Bay would cause waves that were energetic enough to overtop the rather patchy dunes which are our 'defence'. If the evidence of storm damage to the dune system over the last few years can be extrapolated, where significant erosion caused movement of dune sand out to sea (and, by happy coincidence, damaged beyond repair the startlingly ugly post and plastic netting fences to such an extent that they were later removed), a plausible effect of the many-orders-of-magnitude more damaging tsunami waves could be to erode and destroy the dune system entirely in the first series of waves, vegetative cover notwithstanding. Later waves (and tsunami rarely generate just one big wave) would then have no impediment. This effect would be particularly marked in the area of dunes with the narrowest base (and hence the least cross-section of sand to destroy). And where is this section of dune? From Shackleton Street to Waimairi Beach surf club - which contains the very area of L3 limitation already noted.

The notion of dunes as a 'crucial' element of defence nows seems rather tattered. The dune system is well overspecified for the Distant Tsunami's historical run-ups, which in any case cause markedly differing effects. Un-duned areas such as Central Brighton have not suffered historically. The Estuary, with known historical wave run-ups, is completely unprotected absent a barrage or other significant physical barrier at its mouth. Property along the south side of the Estuary and in any of the Peninsula Bays is at much more immediate tsunami risk than is New Brighton, because of the embayment effect. The jury is still out regarding the Southshore (Spit). And let's not even think about the non-notified consent for 14 storeys just along from Moncks Bay road....

And in a Near Tsunami, all bets are off. The combination of massive, energetic waves, short wave run time (and hence, little Civil Defence warning preparation time) and the probable irrelevance of the dune system (where it exists at all), means that the reasonable preparation via land use, dune retention and Civil Defence alluded to by the good Professor, will simply not cope. As Civil Defence staff will privately admit, the likelihood of evacuating in a planned, orderly fashion, the whole of the ocean-facing suburbs, across bridges which are few in number and may not by then exist, is close to zero for such an event. It would be intellectually more honest, and save a good deal of wasted or misdirected resources, if EC and CCC were simply to say that any extreme wave event cannot reasonably be mitigated in any way. As the call centre industry might say, it's YOYO support. You're On Your Own.

Rather than attempting to gauge and mitigate such an event, it would be a more productive exercise for EC and CCC to audit the Distant Tsunami effects, to a much better degree of consistency and clarity than currently appears to be the case. There are known risk areas (harbours, estuaries and bays) where warning systems, evacuation plans, and physical mitigation efforts such as a barrage could be considered.

The other aspect which should be considered is the adequacy of public and private provision of insurance for the respective facilities, services, dwellings and shops. After all, in an extreme tsunami event, it's not CCC or EC which, or private individuals who, end up paying out the bulk of the restoration costs. It's not AMI or State or FMG, either. It's Munich Re, Swiss Re, General Re: the re-insurers of the world. But this can only happen if there is proper cover, frequent physical audits and assessments of risk, and (of course) payment of premiums. I know how my own house is covered. Can CCC and EC say the same about their bridges, sewage pumps, and other infrastructure items?

There is of course a nice, simple, win-win which both ECan and City Council could support: creation of a reef system out in the bay. Wins: surfers get a decent break to ride, tsunami energy is dissipated by offshore reefs, and the reefs will attract and retain at least some sand from the Pegasus Bay longshore drift, thus delaying some decreases in Estuary depth.

So the present state of play over New Brighton Revitalisation can be summarised:

1. The present dune height over the Shackleton Street to Waimairi Surf Club stretch averages 8 metres (allegedly) or is absent (Central Brighton carparks, opposite the Ozone).
2. The L3 building height is limited to 3 storeys/10m as of right
3. A third floor apartment dweller would have only a marginal chance of a sea view (that chance depends on just which dune you're opposite, and on whether or not you have a kitchen table to stand upon). First and second floor dwellers - no chance.
4. So naturally the market for 3-storey apartments is, shall we say, nascent
5. Consents for higher buildings won't be granted case by case - a District Scheme Change is the preferred course of action
6. This will take years, allowing for submissions, objections, notifications, appeals and lawyers' retirement funds.
7. So if you've just spent several million dollars on beachside sections in anticipation of a consent as per 5), better tell your banker you're in for a long, rough ride.
8. And because some rather junky science is being quoted to defend the tattered state and average height of the coastal dune system (as adjudicated by EC), don't expect dunes to be lowered much, or soon, either.
9. Bingo! Catch-22 applies.
10. But the Council will cheerfully insist to all comers that it has a viable 'New Brighton Revitalisation Plan' in action, and point to all those buskers.

In his article, Prof Kirk alludes to the 'derision' with which at least some people greet the current dunes height policy. Perhaps now, we can see why.

Surveys and Beach Values - but they're only asking some humans!

Seagullz, by flying around and sticking their big red beaks in to interesting spots, actually survey quite a lot. Humans make surveying quite hard work, it seems, by comparison. I mean, every young bird knows not to fly too close to certain humans on the beach: the lurkers in that wonderfully concealing native vegemation for starters - they're very annoyed at any squawking which gives away their position. And young humans who leave behind those nice shiny cans - they can be quite deadly with stones and suchlike. And the big noisy shiny boxes with wheels that chase us up and down the beach - best avoided. But somehow I don't think that these particular beach users will get interviewed by those earnest young humans - get Surveyed about their Preferences for Beach Values. You see, they don't have the Right Beach Values. Any old bird knows that you get the survey result you pay for, and who's running this one? That's right, young gullz, the Greenspace Unit. The Green Spacey guys who want native plants everywhere. Nature at her full, rampant, undisturbed best. Preferably, without those pesky humans.

But if you have to pick the humans least offensive to your Green Spacey self, best stack your sample with the Right People. So you can tell straight away (just like looking down at the back of a Fish and Chip Shop) what's not going to be there. At the chippie, don't go looking for leftover lattes. At the Beach Values Survey, don't go looking for motorcycle or drift car races on the beach, or car parking on the beach. Not the Right Beach Values, you see. Much too diverse. Even though, if you fly over at just the right time of day or night, you can see all these activities and more, if you have beady little seagullz eyes. But I can guarantee you that these won't ever, ever be noted, quoted or voted in a paid-for Survey.

You see, humans want many different things of their Beach, but Green Spaceys seems to want less diversity, not more. We seagullz have acquired quite a taste for the more exotic plants - but that's not the right Green, you see. Greenspace's motto for the beach (they don't have one but seagullz are clevver birds and can invent the odd motto) could well be "Ngaio and Pingao Up the Wazoo", to judge by the plantings up and down the beach. Talk about monoculture!

So, with this Survey, those Green Spaceys really want to confirm their own "Nature (as interpreted by and through Us) Knows Best" meme. Which when you think about it, is really strange, as it means Government by an Elite, rather than by We, the People. I seem to recall a very old gull in my distant youth, saying something like 'it will be a great day when the last emperor is strangled with the entrails of the last priest'. And look what those dumb humans have wound up with. A freaking Green Priesthood. Ain't life funny.

The really funny thing about Green Spacey plantings on the beach is that actual humans hate it. When we go human-watching (and what better than on a sunny clear day or early evening, when one or two of those shiny cans have been consumed, as then humans seem to get a little crazy, but I digress), we head for the sandy bits which is where the humans like to congregate. You don't see too many children happily sliding down the ice-plants, waving and shouting to Mummy and Daddy. And you don't see humans paired off and enjoying a quiet moment on a nice pingao mattress. I mean, have you ever tried to even sit on a pingao plant? Take it from a wise old bird - don't. But we certainly do see little humans rolling down the few sandy slides left, families nestled into sandy pockets of the lower dunes, and those slightly crazy ones well tucked away from the wind and other humans in their little sandy nests. And we get good pickings from them all.

You just have to laugh, don't you. Those stupid humans vote for councillors and pay their rates, and get staff that those same councillors cannot influence, surveys that are used to then confirm staff predilections, and plants they can't even bloody well sit on! And meanwhile the sand just keeps rolling on down to the Spit, untrammelled by Plans, Strategies and Beach Values. Truly, people come and go, but the Sand (and the Gullz) endure.

Sand, sand and yet more sand. Like, how much per year?

Seagullz love sand. New Brighton and indeed the whole of Pegasus Bay is largely sand. It comes from the mountains, down the Waimakariri and Ashley rivers, out to sea and down the coast. The prevailing north-easterly swells work this sand down the coast, and it ends up as more land, shallower shoreline, and higher features (dune systems) close to the shoreline.

Just how much sand is added to New Brighton, the Southshore spit, the Avon-Heathcote Estuary, and the river mouth off Sumner, is not a commonly quoted amount. We fly over it every day, and there's a lot more of it than there used to be. You, dear reader, will search in vain for a figure for this volume in any Environment Canterbury or Christchurch City Council Web resource. You will also, and less surprisingly, also be unable to find any strategy for managing it. Perhaps this is a state of denial, but one can never neglect good old fashioned ignorance as a possible explanation.

So how much sand does get added to the southern part of Pegasus Bay each year? It's not difficult to get a rough estimate. Using a Lands and Information map (M35, and conventional eastings-northings notation as set out on the map itself to give references) and the fact (disclosed in this pdf fact sheet) that the beach has been moving eastwards for around 450 years from a point we'll take to be near Travis Swamp, we'll do some basic arithmetic on a single A4 sheet. Calculators, map, pencil and paper ready! Here we go.

Looking at our map, we see that Brooklands Lagoon looks quite like an old, cut-off beachline. First simplifying assumption (seagulls have quite small brains, best not to clutter them up trying to be too clever): we'll take a point at the bottom of this lagoon, near a kink on Heyden's Road, and assume that all the beach movement has 'pivoted' around this single point. Grid ref is M35-864531. Think of the later beach growth as a tall triangle (or, tis the season, a Christmas Tree), point facing north. This is that point. And you have to use your imagination, because dere's no pictures on this blog. Seagullz claws can't hold a pencil that well, you see.

Second assumption: the beach 450 years ago was a straight line going down past Travis Swamp (which is an old oxbow loop of the Avon river), to our second reference point, at the western tip of the sewerage farm. Grid ref is M35-857425. The distance down this line is 10.5 km.
Third assumption: this was all foreshore and seabed 450 years ago, and has been raised by the addition of sand, by an average of 2 metres. This is probably an under-estimate, but what the hell. There are few trig points (formal survey marks) quoted on our M35 map, and we have no notion of average elevation. 2 metres it is.

Fourth assumption: The Southshore Spit (from the third point on our triangle, M35-890423) has taken only 30 or 35 years to build to its current height. This may surprise some readers, but tides used to wash over it, and terra firma essentially ended at the south end of Estuary Road. This gives us an opportunity to check the 'how much sand' figure we are about to calculate.

A small aside: Cross checking is always a Good Thing. I can't tell you how many times when flying fast and low, I've almost mistaken those splatters around pub carparks for just another infliction of abstract art - pavement graffiti, if you will. Whereas they are, upon Cross Checking, actually a warm and nourishing meal....life is just so full of confirming experiences.

Lets do the math.

Our triangle (right-angled at the sewerage ponds corner to Keep Things Simple) is 10,500 m high and 3,250 m wide at the base. Area is half base x height, thats, ummmm, 17,062,500 square metres. Using our third assumption of 2 metres accretion over this, that's 34,125,000 cubic metres of sand.

But wait, there's more. Our triangle needs a little extension, to take on the Spit and the lumpy bit just above the Spit, and below our line between grid refs M35 857425 and M35 890423. This area is sort of trapezoid but seagullz only do squares. so it's 750m wide and 1500 m deep. 2 metres uplift again, so we have 750x1500x2 = 2,250,000 cubic metres. Not enough to stop Pine Ave flooding during the odd storm slop, I'm told by an older and wiser bird.

And don't forget the Spit itself. It's 2800m long and say, oh, 250m wide (it wriggles about a lot, and 250 m is probably on the low side). Lets also say it has only 1.5m elevation too: our nanny Council is terribly, terribly worried about its lowness. I say, hey, they're mostly yachties live down there. They know how to handle things at sea. It's the damn landlubbers they can't stand. Oh, the calculation. 2800x250x1.5 = 1,050,000 cubic metres.

So we have three chunks of land, created from sand carried down the rivers, over a known period. Let's add them up: 34,125,000 + 2,250,000 + 1,050,000 = 37,425,000 cubic metres. Put that all on a 100 acre block (all right, a 40.47 ha block) and you have a 92 metre high stack of sand.

We're getting near a figure, aren't we. Divide that by 450, and we have a yearly sand volume. 37,425,000 / 450 = (tada!) 83,167 cubic metres per year. That's 23 10 metre truckloads every day of every year.

Let's say our fact sheet got it wrong. Stranger things have happened at sea. Let's say 600 years and do the division by 600, not 450. That's 62,375 cubic metres a year - 17 of those truckloads per day. That's still a shipload of sand, ain't it.

Now let's Cross Check. We know our Spit (the 1,050,000 cubic metre bit) grew over 30-35 years. divide one by t'other and we get between 30,000 and 35,000 cubic metres per year. Less than the original figure, eh? Where else could sand be going, to explain the difference between (say) 62,375 and (say) 35,000 cubes?

Well, dune height increase, for one thing. Over 30-35 years, lets assume (that's Number 5 if I'm still counting straight ) that the dunes grew from an average height of 4 to 7 metres. Let's say over 6,000 metres (a lot less than the total length of the beach, but let's Keep Things Simple). Our dune cross section is just like that darned hole near the end of the QEII mini-golf course - a 45 degree slope up, a flat bit with the hole in the middle (but oh so small), and a 45 degree slope down again. Our dune at a 4 metre height is thus 4 metres slope along, let's say 4 metres wide at the top, and another 4 metres down. Area is 4x4x2 = 32 square metres.

At a 7 m high dune, still 4 m wide on the top, we have 7 metres along the base of slope up, 7 metres height, 7 metres along the base of slope down again. That's 7x7=49 for the slopes plus 4x7=28 for the top width, for a grand total of, ummm, 77 square metres. So increasing from 4 to 7 m high makes the cross-section of our Real Simple Mini-Golf Dune go from 32 to 77 - a 45 sq m increase. Times 6000 metres of beach, that's 270,000 cubes. Divided by 30, that's 9,000 cubic metres per year. Or by 35, it's still 7,714 cubes.

So we have a sort of Cross Check: our Spit (35-30,000) and Dunes (9000-7714) together have taken around 37,714 oh lets just say 38,000 cubic metres per year (at the longer time period) or 44,000 cubic metres per year (at the shorter time period). Allowing say 1/3 of our original lower figure (62,375) to be Lost at Sea - filling in the Estuary (ask any member of any of the yacht clubs what's happened to average depths around the spit-ward marks over that time) - or filling in seawards of Sumner (ask Tug Lyttleton who got stranded on a bar that wasn't marked on the charts a few years back) would seem to fill the bill. There's our Cross Check if we allow around 20,000 metres of sea-filling.

So, young gulls, there we have it. Sand is being deposited on existing land (more freaking dunes), into the Estuary (Southshore Spit extension and Estuary depth decreases) and out to sea (obviously, if land rises, seabed must too). Around 62,000 to 83,000 cubic metres per year. Wasn't hard to figure, was it?

Hold that figure. Ask your Council whether it's about right. And particularly, ask what they plan to do with it. The Sand Conveyor doesn't respond well to bureaucratic suggestion. It needs actual management. Strategy. Real Planning. Engineering Works. The hard options, you see. Not that soft conservy stuff. Reclamation (accretion is the better geological term) is the de-facto strategy now. But it has reached it's practical maximum in terms of Length of Spit and Height of Freaking Dunes. Ask, where you gonna put that sand? Because, it just keeps coming.

Eight Storeys high - however will they breathe up there?

Seagull has some thoughts on the debate over New Brighton Apartment Block with particular reference to the recent article by Anna Kirtlan in Pegasus Post dated October 24th.

In recent newspaper articles, local residents have been quoted as being first ‘for’ and then ‘against’ the proposal for an eight-storey apartment block. We will be directly affected by the apartments, but do not recall being asked for our opinion by any party.

The eight storeys will mean that the building will block the delightful morning sun that comes through our kitchen and bathroom window. Plus it will block our sea view. Yes, almost unbelievably, we can currently see a small section of blue sea and waves from just one part of our verandah.

Despite that, we are all in favour of seeing the regulations changed to allow apartment development along the waterfront.

New Brighton doesn’t need committees deciding what’s best for New Brighton with proposals for style of shopping precinct or entertainment in the mall. Let the apartment development happen along the waterfront and the restaurants and businesses that can meet local needs will follow. Our own preference is for a little Acland Street (St Kilda, Melbourne), but these things have a way of evolving that defies both planning and prediction.

Chrissie Williams was quoted in the article as believing that the three-storey rule was perfectly adequate and that she received a lot of feedback to that effect. However there are also many other residents who want the development on the beach front to proceed as soon as possible.

Let's just remind Chrissie Williams that her most recent feedback suggests that her opinion on this and other matters relating to development in Eastern Christchurch was valued less than that of candidates who were recently re-elected to Council. And while we're at it - who elected Mary McCammon as Brighton spokesperson?

While Community Board Chairman, Don Rowlands was for the most part enthusiastic and supportive of development in New Brighton, he then went on to make preposterous comments regarding those on lower incomes losing access to the sea front. Most of those on lower incomes that currently have access to the sea front only do so because they are living in substandard houses owned by developers waiting for the damn regulations to change.

Even so, I am not sure how appropriate it is for council to introduce policies of social engineering to keep property prices in New Brighton deliberately low so as to "make sure a variety of housing is available in New Brighton". As part of the so-called gentrification of New Brighton we thoroughly object to any suggestion that potential capital gain on our property needs to be controlled by Council. Imagine just for a moment that on that basis Council decided it needed to act on controlling property values around Boy’s High School so as to be sure that "a variety of housing was available to all people around the school". Unthinkable isn’t it!

Part of the need to build eight storeys is of course promoted by the need to see over the mountains of sand that are encouraged to build up along our beach in the name of so-called conservation. Even the latest attempt to get us all to plant trees (we have already done that without the need of committees and expensive brochures) is another step in the process of land reclamation to make the Brighton Spit more habitable for it’s 21st century inhabitants, the human population.

The management of the beach and sandhills via the District Plan is a set of regulations well overdue for a fresh look. Priority needs to be given to our beach as a recreational park for all the people of Christchurch, not as a 'conservation zone'.

It’s not committees and well-meaning but ultimately dopey regulation that will make New Brighton go ahead. It is people who are prepared to invest capital in development that will increase population density. All the rest will follow.