Port Hills housing safe—local bodies

Press, 11 August 1979, Page 6

Port Hills housing safe—local bodies

sibie tor the Port Hills be-, to prevent unstable land like the recent one in y\bbots i ford cannot always be pre-: dieted. of course: they never expected this one at Abbotsford,” said the Heathcote County Engineer (Mr D. The confidence of local! bodies is reflected in the remarks of the Town Clerk of Lyttelton (Mr B. A. Hillier). “We have had houses on! the hillside at Lyttelton for 140 years and they are still! here. They had houses at. Abbotsford fyr 20 years and] they are no longer there,” he Although a slip the size of: the Abbotsford one has not' been recorded in Christchurch, Lyttelton, or Heath-! cote, minor slips have! threatened homes in the A report prepared by the North Canterbury Catchment: Board last year said that a! big part of Lyttelton Borough! was a definite risk as far as: soft stability was concerned. • It said that 10 per cent ot I the area surveyed was sub-: ject to slight slip and erosion , problems, 63 per cent had! moderate stability problems,'

1 18 per cent had severe prob-i lems, and 2 per cent was al very severe risk. The remaining 7 per cent included quarries and reclaimed land. | The residential area was I included in the moderaterisk category, although parts i could be found to be a severe I risk under detailed site invesItigation only. ! Mr Hillier said there had been few subdivisions in I Lyttelton Borough in recent ‘ years and none had had to Ibe declined approval because {cause of the instability of the land. In Christchurch two I planned subdivisions had been rejected because, of 'land instability, said the | City Surveyor (Mr A. C. Iversen). I He could recall no sub-i i division that had failed to I igain the approval of the! ’ Heathcote County Council {because of land instability. I In all three areas, land . planned for subdivision is inspected by council engineer- . I ing staff, the Catchment ;i ßoard, and the Christchurch! {Drainage Board, all of which I submit reports to the counidl before a decision can be made on whether to approve a subdivision. j Any excavation or filling! .work on the Port Hills must! ‘be approved by the Catch-j ment Board.

Mr Iversen said the Local Government Act that came into force on April 1 required local authorities to look much more closely at subdivision plans than lhey had been required to in the past. If a council chose to ignore warnings from other authorities before granting permission for a subdivision it would “have to take the rap” if anything went wrong afterwards.

It would be up to the Earthquake and War Damage Commission to decide what sort of action would be taken.

In Dunedin, geologists have calculated that Abbotsford slid 48m downhill on Wednesday night. They believe the slide has not moved since.

i They say there is no prospect of the western side of the hill slipping away. The landslip occurred on the eastern slope. Seven hectares of the hillside subdivision were lost. Mr I. McKellar, a member of the Geological Survey, which has been drilling for weeks looking for the cause of the land movement, told a meeting of slip victims yesterday there was a totally different type of formation {on the western side, which {was in no danger of slipping away.