However, a regional councillor has warned you cannot ‘‘stop stupid’’ as developments happen in risky areas.
Under new government rules, regional councils must now share all the information they gather on natural hazards and district councils must list the risks in plain language, on every property’s Land Information Memorandum report.
At the West Coast Regional Council’s Resource Management meeting this week, staff reported they were aiming to have a hazards portal open for public access on the council website by the end of the year.
The portal would show the various risk zones, allow people to look at the maps and reports to evaluate risks to their property.
Many of the reports held by the council were highly technical but under new Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 rules, it would now provide simple language summaries of each one.
The council’s natural hazards expert Dr Sharon Hornblow was working on the project and the council would need to be 100% confident in the site before it went public, Ms Morgan said.
Cr Ewen said with council elections coming up, new councillors would need to be made aware the work was mandatory.
Liquefaction - when soil turns to liquid in an earthquake - was a new addition to the hazards list, he noted.
Cr Andy Campbell said the impact would depend a lot on where a potential quake was centred.
The important thing was to stop people building in ‘‘stupid’’ places.
‘‘We can’t stop what’s been done ... but building right by the sea is probably not a good idea now.’’
Cr Brett Cummings said liquefaction would be the last thing people worried about when ‘‘the big one’’ hit.
‘‘Most places at risk of liquefaction on the Coast are probably already built on for retail and so on ... Westport was built on liquefaction.’’
Cr Cummings said some Coast developers were not bothering to ask about natural hazards.
‘‘They just get a digger in, have the site cleared, get a building on there in a week.
‘‘No-one can stop stupid. But I’m sure the insurance people will pick up on it and that’s where ‘buyer beware’ (comes in) isn’t it.’’
Cr Chris Coll - a Westport land surveyor - said if people did build in ‘‘stupid’’ places they had to come up with technology that countered those risks.
Chairman Peter Haddock said the hazards project was an important piece of work for the council and the community, staff were to be commended for it.
‘‘As we’ve seen in events around the country, there’s a huge legal risk to both the government and councils by not identifying these risks.
‘‘We’ve seen for years that people have built in wrong places, whether it because of coastal inundation or flood risk or just building on hazardous places like the toes of hills,’’ he said.
- By Lois Williams, Local Democracy Reporter
• LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
