Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

I watched a very upset property owner in Rotorua, plunging a three metre rod down into the soil on his property to illustrate how the local council was to blame for giving consent for a residential development to be built on such an inappropriate land structure.

We have all been warned but there are many examples of dubious land development in the Bay of Plenty. Farmers are even more aware of the problems with our soils as they are often accused of bad farm management by not controlling run-off from their farms, by allowing stock to graze on stream banks and by developing roading and structures on their land that threaten our ‘versatile soils'. It seems that the gentleman believes that council or perhaps both councils could be the problem with inadequate understanding control of development and in particular control of stormwater in all parts of the district

Omokoroa can absorb a certain amount of rain and release it through the soil without too many problems but as roads and houses appear, the run-off is concentrated in water courses that become significantly more saturated than the soil. It is unbelievable that the council believed they could put another 6000 houses with the associated roading on the peninsula and not expect an increased problem with stormwater and land slumping. Councillor Webber has revealed that the council has spent over $50m already on stormwater control to protect the current Omokoroa development alone. The slumping with damaged homes in Matua recently and the Vale Street collapse a few years ago are more examples of the same inherent instability in our soils.

The recent protection of versatile soils for agriculture has seen more residential development on flood plains. In the last District Plan WBOPDC provided maps of what they considered might be flood prone areas. One project at proposed at that time included a 40 house development on the McKinney Stream estuary. The project was successfully challenged with local information of actual flood pattern information available in the local area. This exercise also revealed that the council had no guidelines for residential development on flood prone areas and the engineering practice of top loading land to compact the soils is useless when the soil becomes saturated. A builder's report I saw on a property recognised a house splitting in two because, in one part the soils was ‘so saturated it lost its load bearing capacity'. The local phrase is that it had ‘turned to porridge' but the proper term is liquefaction.

Maybe we will need an earthquake before the council will admit that their approved residential developments are disasters waiting to happen and admit that farmers might know more about the land than they think. The recent increase in storm bombs has revealed the need for a better understanding that the rich versatile soils are a problem for every one in the Bay and that council's responsibility has to start long before demanding site engineering reports and charging ever-increasing consent fees.