Milford and Wairau Valley suffered the worst flooding in the city during the Anniversary Weekend storm in 2023. Two people died there, and 69 were rescued. <\/p>\n
Afterwards, 2500 tonnes of ruined household possessions were carted away from Milford, and 131 homes designated Category 3 – too risky to live in. <\/p>\n
To prevent history from repeating itself, Auckland Council\u2019s Healthy Waters team came up with a plan to convert the Takapuna Golf Course, on council-owned land, from 18 holes to nine. <\/p>\n
The balance would become a wetland to hold 550 million litres of floodwater, thus preventing it from sweeping through the suburb. <\/p>\n
The suggestion has caused a buzz, especially from locals. Kiwi golf superstar Ryan Fox weighed in<\/a>, saying the loss would \u201csignificantly damage\u201d the recreational side of golf. <\/p>\n AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n In response, the club has come up with an alternate plan<\/a> that retains the course\u2019s 18 holes and uses a \u2018dry basin\u2019 approach to create a flood retention zone. <\/p>\n Both ideas have been looked at by engineers and other experts from Healthy Waters. A redevelopment announcement by Auckland Council is due on Monday morning, presumably outlining the more appealing option.<\/p>\n Contributing writer at The Spinoff, Hayden Donnell, has chronicled the saga<\/a> that is the back-and-forth over the course.<\/p>\n He told The Front Page<\/b><\/a> that the idea of doing away with the golf course seems to offend people on a personal level.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s also a lot of money, let\u2019s face it, tied up in a lot of golf courses, and there\u2019s a lot of resources for people that are passionate about the sport to access,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first public backlash over proposed changes to a golf course, either. <\/p>\n \u201cYou might remember a few years ago, 2019, I think it was, that Chamberlain Park Golf Course in Mount Albert, the local board there proposed to remove half of it and make it nine holes [as they] desperately needed some community sports facilities. <\/p>\n \u201cThat caused a massive backlash. The board was voted out, the proposal was put on hold or aborted. <\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like this happens whenever a golf course is in any way threatened with some sort of different use. Remuera Golf Course, another one, where Phil Goff was talking about potentially using it for a different purpose. <\/p>\n \u201cThen the local board extended its lease to 2091.<\/p>\n AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cJust for context, the council owns, I think, 13 golf courses in Auckland, and there is something like 43 overall. So it\u2019s not a city that is short of golf courses, but it still proves incredibly difficult to get rid of any of them,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Tom Mansell, Auckland Council head of sustainable partnerships (healthy waters and flood resilience), told The Front Page<\/b><\/a> they\u2019re in the final stages of an eight-step feasibility assessment of Takapuna Golf Club\u2019s revised design. <\/p>\n \u201cOnce this process has concluded, we\u2019ll be sharing the outcome of this with our elected members, the local community, and the resident and business groups who have been involved in the engagement \u2013 and the public,” he said. <\/p>\n While Mansell can\u2019t divulge the cost of construction for both options until the review is revealed, he did mention the business case submitted by the council to the Transport, Resilience, and Infrastructure Committee in April indicated costs of about $57 million. <\/p>\n \u201cThe goal is to maximise the amount of flood storage so we can minimise the flooding impacts to homes and businesses. At the end of the day, this is a flood resilience project, and reducing flood risk to our communities is our primary goal. So, if it\u2019s feasible to increase the flood storage, then we will do so,\u201d Mansell said. <\/p>\n Listen to the full episode<\/b><\/a> to hear more about the proposal.<\/b><\/p>\n AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime\/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.<\/b><\/p>\n You can follow the podcast at <\/b>iHeartRadio<\/b><\/a>, <\/b>Apple Podcasts<\/b><\/a>, <\/b>Spotify<\/b><\/a>, or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Milford and Wairau Valley suffered the worst flooding in the city during the Anniversary Weekend storm in 2023.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[253,28228,8915,30636,19289,91806,91809,21003,16419,10282,2826,91808,6582,756,91807,254,57963,5029,79,88309,5598,6093,16,15,6507,21033,6095],"class_list":{"0":"post-234495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-away","9":"tag-club","10":"tag-clubs","11":"tag-days","12":"tag-deal","13":"tag-depends","14":"tag-fate","15":"tag-from","16":"tag-front","17":"tag-future","18":"tag-golf","19":"tag-hazard","20":"tag-just","21":"tag-learning","22":"tag-milfords","23":"tag-on","24":"tag-page","25":"tag-plan","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-takapuna","28":"tag-the","29":"tag-to","30":"tag-uk","31":"tag-united-kingdom","32":"tag-water","33":"tag-were","34":"tag-with"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114788904773631927","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}