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MARINE ECOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP / Supplied
An earthquake in 2016 dramatically raised the east coast of Marlborough, but that elevated land is technically zoned as underwater.
When the Marlborough District Council finished drafting its new environmental plan in June 2016, it had no idea that an earthquake every 5,000 years would strike near Kaikōura five months later.
He had already drawn a line separating land and sea, and the rules for each, when the earthquake lifted the region’s coastline out of the ocean, in some places as much as 20 feet.
Four years later, and almost a year after finalizing Marlborough’s environmental “master plan,” the line was still unchanged.
Several land-worth rugby fields along Marlborough’s east coast are still zoned as “coastal marinas,” an area where boats can legally anchor and residents can surf, sail or swim.
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The council’s environmental policy manager, Pere Hawes, said this month that the council was now able to redefine the boundary, following aerial photographs and surveys of the east coast.
Hawes said there was some merit in rezoning the raised seabed as ‘open space three’, lining up with most of the land next to it, but the council had yet to make a formal decision.
The boundary change was scheduled for next year, after staff obtained permission from a council committee.
SUPPLIED
The Kaikoura images reveal dramatic changes to the shoreline with the seafloor rising up to 2m after the 7.8 earthquake.
The council would consult with the public on the proposed change in the zones.
Crabbing company Burkhart Fisheries suggested at a hearing last month that the council use the rule change to see what other variations to the plan were necessary after the earthquake.
Burkhart Fisheries attorney Quentin Davies told a commissioner that the plan required that access to and along coastal areas be improved from pre-earthquake levels, even though the magnitude 7.8 earthquake worsened access. to the east coast.
“Currently, you have dry land, which is divided into zones like sea, but that is not a coastal marine area, it is part of the Marlborough district.
“At the present time, any activity, even a walk on the beach, technically requires a consent of resources up to [the uplifted coastal areas] they are brought to the district as land. “
The hearing focused on a request from Burkhart Fisheries to excavate gravel in a corner of Ward Beach, south of Blenheim, and restore its temporary launch site so that its boats could reach its fisheries. The commissioner had not yet made a decision.
University of Canterbury researcher Dr Shane Orchard said that the East Coast Recovery group, of which he was a part, was coincidentally looking for how to define the upper-median watermark, used as a cutoff line for coastal marine areas.
“If we can help the council with that, we will try, but if they are doing it anyway of their own free will, that is good too.
CHLOE RANFORD / LDR
University of Canterbury researcher Dr. Shane Orchard, right, says redefining the seabed raised by the Kaikoura earthquake is important to its management.
“It is important to have a type of environment that suits your most appropriate management area. If an area is obviously a piece of land, then we don’t want it to be managed like a seabed.
“At the moment, if the city council looks at a piece of land on the old seabed, then different parts of the [Resource Management Act] it would apply to him, compared to the land higher up on the beach. “
The elevated seafloor had facilitated access to the shoreline, prompting the council to propose banning motorists on a 45-kilometer stretch to help protect it, through an ordinance. The research group has produced a study to inform the new ordinance.
