Active Authentic Christchurch Centre

I've been highly critical of the planning that led to the Christchurch we know was built before the earthquake. And I was also critical of some of the planning for the CBD post-earthquake.

In particular I could not believe the institutional silence around previous earthquakes that knocked the Cathedral spire down. However. Now that we are where we are, I now believe that New Zealand has a duty to protect as much as possible of the Cathedral from further demolition and from future earthquakes.

The rhetoric is compelling: the city is Christ Church, the centre of Christ Church is Cathedral Square, Christ Church is internationally known as the Cathedral City. There is massive value and history attached to this place and the icon that is the iconic church at the centre.

There are famous cathedrals and churches in Cologne, Coventry and Kobe - still standing, or rebuilt, iconic heritage, memories enshrined. Proudly. At a cost. A heritage cost. An investment.

Canterbury Cathedral has similar status for New Zealand now. Yes it is vulnerable and the Church of England can't pay the amount needed to protect it. But it is essential for the future of Christchurch that the church that remains - remain standing. It is precious for the economic future of Christchurch, as it is for the city's cultural future and its heritage. What better place to remember where the city came from, and to remember the earthquake itself. This has to be a Government responsibility and priority.

Which brings me to the 4 Avenues area of the old central business district. What to do, now that 800 or so buildings have been or are being demolished. I read the Listener magazine piece by Bob Jones, and agree with amalgamation of sites idea. Not sure about a lot of water spaces in there.

But it is clear that the market will not rush into building commercial buildings now in this part of Christchurch. A lot of money has already gone - to Auckland and other parts of New Zealand - and many businesses have relocated to other commercial hubs in other parts of Christchurch where there is some critical mass, and where there is infrastructure they can connect into.

I did entertain the idea of relocating Jade Stadium and QEII into the central business area. I was thinking, well, if both of these amenities are to be built, why not locate them in the centre - given all the available land. (I don't think it is appropriate to rebuild QEII at Burwood. This land is too compromised.)

But. Stadiums are very expensive things as we know, and we look at what's happening in Dunedin right now. The Super 15 games that have been playing in the Christchurch temporary rugby facility have had a great buzz about them. Recessions are not good times to rebuild the sort of stadium that Jade was - ie very big - very imposing, takes up a lot of space, and hardly gets used. Doesn't do a lot to activate an urban environment either.

But that's not the same with a multi-purpose athletic and swimming facility. It can integrate much better into an urban fabric, and be used as an anchor for a different sort of Christchurch centre....

I see Christchurch as the centre of a remarkable industry that is New Zealand's own. It's the outdoor pursuit, physical fitness, extreme sport capital of the world. It also offers the best place to chill, get organised, and equipped, for all those fantastic activitities that New Zealand is increasingly known for in Australia and further afield: Great Walks, cycling expeditions, mountaineering, ski-ing, tri-athlons, elite sport events, canoe-events, rafting...

The South Island has other centres, but they are constrained in their accommodation offerings, and do not offer the space that Christchurch now has to be the active life-style support city for the South Island.

Christchurch needs to be able live this lifestyle itself. Putting an upgraded QEII facility in the centre provides a new magnet, and new organising force for transport: cycling becomes much more dominant and rational. So does the related infrastructure. So does walking. And the sorts of businesses that would co-locate will be tourism, event and support services - event management, clothing, gear, and even manufacturers that specialise in elite sport equipment.

Well. That's what I think aanyway.

Renewing Christchurch & Rethinking Resilience: 1

This and the next 3 posts contain extracts from a research report investigating the Christchurch Central City area bounded by the 4 Avenues post earthquake. It is in the form of a Cultural Plan. You can have the whole report if you are interested. It looks at the Draft Central City Plan prepared by Christchurch Council, and contains original material and photographs drawn from site visits....

Ideas that drive this plan…

Katrina killed 1300 people. Also lost were people and places at the heart of New Orleans’ cultural economy. A Cultural Plan was agreed with stakeholders on how that cultural heart would be renewed, rebuilt, and attracted back home again….

The 1995 earthquake in Kobe killed 6,400 people and destroyed more than 100,000 buildings. To remember and learn from this savage experience the city adopted the theme “making the invisible visible” and celebrated places where the living who survived had found safety.

A thousand years ago Ngai Tahu came to Canterbury, living lightly upon it, respecting the life force of land and living things, making and telling stories about this relationship in wood and in words.

English colonisers of Christchurch laid out their dreams and buildings on the land assuming it would support and sustain their cultural symbols as reliably as back home in England. Regular earthquakes shook that faith for 150 years, shaking those assumptions, but not seriously till now.

The wise man builds his house on rock, but the man who builds his house on sand the same way risks seeing it fall. Renewing Christchurch and minimising risk requires the reality of the landscape to be recognised and embraced. Seismic realities can be ignored no longer. They need to be built into Christchurch culture.

Culture is about more than writing and music and art. It includes the shared beliefs, customs, rituals and values of people and communities in a given place at a given time. Christchurch is the place and the time is now, recovering from earthquake, eyes wide open to those realities, and gaps in its cultural landscape.

Experiences and feelings in poems, pictures, dances, songs and plays expressed by those touched by the earthquake can be integrated into the life and plans of Christchurch, rather than being embalmed in the hidden memories of an earthquake. These cultural expressions can be harnessed to build a new belief.

Ngai Tahu’s cultural relationships with Christchurch have also been marginalised by European culture. Now is the opportunity to find a new cultural balance.

It is understandeable that the people of Christchurch yearn for certainty in this time of disruption. But low confidence in public planning will be justified and deepen if authorities persist with the status quo rather than grasping the nettle of adaptive planning needed to deliver the resilience and flexibility that will satisfy insurance industry risk assessors.

Rigid symbols of stone gallery buildings and unbending oak trees need to relax into a consciously renewed and resilient culture redolent of a responsive occupation of a moving land by a diversity of people.

Renewing Christchurch on sand requires a fundamental change of culture, a planned rebuild of its cultural landscape, by means of a cultural plan that can point the way while changing over time, so that development and planning and public life is constantly informed and reminded of forces that are beyond human control. The city must learn from its experience and move in step with the land and its people.

Christchurch has the opportunity of cultural renewal from the inside out, as a tool of adaptive transformation, and as a beacon for travellers seeking inspiration. It needs a new belief in itself.

This report contributes to that process…

(This is the short introductory section of my report: Renewing Christchurch & Rethinking Resilience - A Cultural Plan. If you want the whole thing - please contact me.)

Renewing Christchurch & Rethinking Resilience: 2

WHAT IS A CULTURAL PLAN?

Christchurch is like every city in that it has a personality that reflects its history, diversity, “sense of place”, and the values, needs, and dreams of its residents. Many things contribute to how people experience their city and local community: traditions, neighbourhoods, weather, landscape, natural environment, schools, leadership, businesses, parks, housing, and the ebb and flow of events and activities.

One thing is essential in shaping a city's personality – and that is how people see, feel, and connect with its cultural life. A community's culture is expressed in many ways - through art, music, theatre, dance, and film – but also in food, architecture, urban planning, public places and institutions, cultural traditions, media, and new ideas.

Why plan?

Arts and cultural activities do happen on their own through the energy and dreams of creative individuals and organisations, and in times of crisis like post-earthquake in the efforts of people and organisations as they try to make sense of the new reality and get on with life in a changed and changing environment. Sometimes these activities are helped by providing spaces, funding, collaborations, and other resources. And sometimes there needs to be a much greater public engagement with cultural activity – for example when it is at the heart of any transition or change process.

Planning can map out Christchurch's arts and cultural assets, needs, opportunities, resources, and priorities to help create strategies and guide actions for the community to further develop the cultural sector. But planning can and must go further than that if Christchurch wants the sort of renewal that is needed now – which is not really a “post earthquake” renewal, rather it is a “seismic reality” renewal.

Why plan now?

Christchurch has always recognised the importance of the arts and culture. Around the world, creativity is touted as an indispensable resource for civic vitality and prosperity. Studies have measured the impact of the cultural sector Christchurch in annual economic activity in terms of jobs and revenues. Christchurch rightly wants to ensure that its community remains a hotbed of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial energy, and the Draft Christchurch Central City Plan advocates initiatives that can underpin that aspiration.

But there is an unusual cultural change opportunity now, which is not being seized by Christchurch planners. That is the need to shift Christchurch culture from one of environmental certainty, to one of seismic uncertainty. That need is not being seized primarily because of the very human hope that the earthquakes will stop. And not come back for a very long time. Creative energy has hit an unusual peak in Christchurch following the sequence of earthquakes.

There is a grassroots recognition that things cannot be the same. There is evidence of cultural activity which brings the arts into urban planning and architecture. There is evidence of cultural events where science and art are coming together in new ways as people try to make sense of the unfamiliar landscape that Christchurch and Canterbury has become. Long term renewal of Christchurch requires a plan that engages with and influences the need for fundamental cultural change in Christchurch.

(This is a short section of my report: Renewing Christchurch & Rethinking Resilience - A Cultural Plan. If you want the whole thing - please contact me.)

Renewing Christchurch & Rethinking Resilience: 3

While it is not the purpose of this report to rewrite the history of Christchurch, it is important to appreciate the role of Christchurch institutions in educating and instilling the reality of earthquake risk in the past. Local institutions that might be entrusted with that responsibility could include: newspapers, the library, the museum, and the council. Schools might also provide locally specific education.

The Christchurch newspaper clipping (Shown here. Newspaper article. The Star newspaper, Issue 7417, 31 May 1902, Page 5. Obtained from “Papers Past”, National Library Archives. Click on it to enlarge it.) provides historic information about a number of things. It describes the fact that the Cathedral spire has been brought down before and “severely shaken” on another occasion. It also describes research:

“from almost all earthquake- ridden countries in the world” and found that “in no earthquakey country is there a spire nearly so high as that in Christchurch”. It also states that “to carry out the work in brick… is quite impossible…”

Newspaper archive research indicates that the top 40 feet of the Cathedral spire were knocked down by earthquake in 1888. The above report relates to the Cheviot centered earthquake in 1901. Reports also record the spire being damaged by earthquake in 1922 and 1929. Apparently there was another significant earthquake just off the coast of Christchurch in Pegasus Bay in 1987 – though it is difficult to track down archive information about this.

However it appears to have triggered research by the New Zealand Earthquake Commission (EQC) at the time (The Earthquake Hazard In Christchurch: a detailed evaluation, by Elder, McCahon and Yetton, 1991), which was largely corroborated by separate research conducted by the New Zealand Institute of Nuclear and Geological Science (NZINGS) which was reported in 1995 (Geology of Christchurch, Brown, R. D. Beetham, B. R. Paterson, and J. H. Weeber, Environmental and Engineering Geoscience, 1995).

This information cites four earthquakes that did severe damage in, and very close to the City of Christchurch (1869, 1901, 1922 and 1987). The NZINGS report (1995) states:

The geology, tectonic setting, and active seismicity of the Christchurch area indicate that future large earthquakes will occur which will have major impact on the city. Earthquakes are expected to produce liquefaction, landsliding, ground cracking, and tsunami. Planning and design to mitigate the consequences of these phenomena are an essential prerequisite for preparedness.... The identification and quantifying of geological hazards, and the implementation of regulation and planning designed to discourage irresponsible land use, should continue in the future as the geological knowledge and database is expanded....

Based on its research the EQC report had predicted a return period for another damaging earthquake in Christchurch of 55 years.

My research into the roles and responsibilities of the Christchurch City Council and the Canterbury Regional Council suggest that their actions have amounted to a conspiracy of silence regarding the risks to buildings and development posed by local seismicity. It has been suggested by many that there was a desire to protect the value of land and not threaten the city’s economic progress.

Estimates of the economic cost of the recent cluster of earthquakes range up $20 billion NZ, with those costs being met by the Earthquake Commission, Central Government, Insurance Companies, Local Government and private pockets. Suffice to note, the earthquake cat is now well and truly out of the bag, which is one reaspon why insurance companies are reluctant to invest in future risk in Christchurch, until the risk is better understood, and until all concerned build and adapt to the conditions. No longer will it be acceptable or appropriate to claim the tallest cathedral when that claim amounts to Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Or the foolish man building his house upon the sand.

(This is a section of my report: Renewing Christchurch & Rethinking Resilience - A Cultural Plan. If you want the whole thing - please contact me.)

Talking Earthquakes & Fission in Japan

This would be one of the more unusual presentations I have every given. It was to Japanese students learning English, and it was with my daughter and a class she works with as a JET in Sapporo in Japan. The brief was - as you can see - Nuclear Power, earthquakes, New Zealand and Japan. Managed to weave into this a YouTube clip with the All Blacks haka before they played Japan....

There is a tall poppy thing that goes on in the classroom. No matter how hard you try it's quite hard to get a student to say anything - or even ask anything - though one student did ask me what my hobbies were and how old I was. My daughter had encouraged me to bring some chocolate rewards. In fact I found some chocolate coins wrapped in All Black silver paper from the Warehouse. Very popular.

This is a little extract from my presentation. After explaining nuclear power (and that our very own Sir Ernest Rutherford was the first to split the atom), my job was to explain that water cooling is a critical part of a nuclear power station, and that when tsunami knock that out, you rapidly go into a nuclear melt-down. It was interesting. Believe me... And afterwards the students wrote their reactions - in English - and I thought you would enjoy them as much as I did: - I could know how to make power from an atom. Also, I could know about New Zealand and Auckland! I want to go there someday! - Tatsuki Eto - When I heard that Scarlet's father comes, I didn't expect what kind of father comes. In this class, he teached us very simply, so we understood easily. I didn't know that he was a teacher, so I didn't know why a ordinary father knew a lot of things about scients. I enjoyed very much! - The video of athletes dancing a strange dance was very interesting. I could learn about nuclear energy - Yusuke Sawada. - This class was interesting for me. The pictures of Scarlet were cool. I was suprised at height of nuclear power plant. I guess it was difficult to cool down its reactor because it was too big. New Zealand is nice country because they use clean energy. We have to learn from New Zealand but it is difficult for us to clean energy because our population is too large. - Thank you for speeching. I didn't know about system of nuclear power plant well honestly, but I could understand it very much. I wish I had more opportunity to study interesting subject such as this lecture. - Masato Tanaka - Today, I could understand what nuclear power is. I don't agree to use nuclear power generation so I think New Zealand is very nice country. I'd like to stop it in Japan too. - The lecture was very interesting for me. At first, I could see a lot of pictures of city and region in NZ. These picture were unique, so I had more interest in NZ. Next topic was nuclear power. I have examined about the accident in Tohoku area, so I had much information, but your explanation was easier to understand than the internet. Thank you very much! - I felt interesting this class. I learned more earthquack and nuclear. Also this teacher teaches very well. Japanese teacher should learn his teaching style. - I can learned about New Zealand and electric power. Especially I was interested in that hydraulic power is main power generation in New Zealand. I thought that Japanese had to try saving electric power more. I think I missed my calling.

Floods in USA vs Earthquakes in NZ

I'm doing some lecturing in the Planning School of Auckland University at the moment and get to attend some interesting talks from visiting experts. Like Wayne Feiden from Northampton in the US of A. He talked about natural hazard management in the US. It was extremely interesting to learn what happens there. Especially when we know waht has actually happened here in Christchurch. This slide shows the relative incidence of natural disasters across the USA. It appears these statistics are signed at the highest level. Presidential Disaster Declarations. We were advised that flooding is the biggest single cause of natural disasters. I remember all the news about the Mississippi and how those people all just walked away from their houses when they got flooded. You might remember. And none of them were insured....

Wayne showed us a few images from the damage done at New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. He explained that before the suburbs got built out in New Orleans, there had been large tracts of wetlands which had absorbed the energy of hurricanes in the past. These were the houses that copped the most damage because they were built on low lying land.

He explained how many of these houses were built on low cost low lying concrete foundations - with no room for flood waters to flow beneath - and no height above flood waters either.

Apparently after the flood a high amount of planning and regulation got forced through. Rushed through. Someone had the bright idea of trailer park housing (remember that George Wood), and people and families have been living that way for years. Very poor, damp, humid style of housing. Especially bad in winter. And pretty awful in hot summers also.

But it was Wayne's information about state coverage of flood damage that made me sit up. You can see in this slide that 1% chance of flooding areas are Federally mapped - ie the US of A does that mapping. Not even state governments. These are signed off at the very highest level. And - he said - you cannot get private flood insurance. The US of A has a National Flood Insurance program (sounds a bit like the Earthquake Commission....)

Apparently it is - in theory - a self-supporting fund. But it was the next bit that was very interesting. He described that what comes with the fund is a VERY large carrot (they will cover all the costs of flood damage), and a VERY large stick (you can't qualify for this national flood damage insurance unless local land use regulations and building codes comply with Federal Rules.)

This detail strikes at the heart of what has gone wrong in Christchurch with insurance and EQC cover it seems to me. The EQC pays $100,000 on every house (more or less) doesn't matter if it was built badly, or if it was build on land the Council knew would liquify. There was no incentive in Chch for council's to act appropriately, nor builders, nor developers. Sure some people had a private top up insurance - but they've run a mile now.

I like this slide. He explained that in a very short time, the earthquakes in Chricthcurch will be forgotten. So it is essential to make institutional changes now, while there is an appreciation of what is necessary, and what went wrong. But - as I've indicated before - I wonder whether the Canterbury Inquiry is ready to grasp that nettle.

How Strong was the Christchurch Earthquake?

I had to go to Timaru over the weekend to spend time with my elderly mum. Stopped in at Christchurch on the way, and had time to jump on a bike and pedal around exploring... This is the Merivale Shopping Centre in Papanui Road. Looks quite normal from a distance... But shops on both sides of the road are fenced off. You can see in this Deli window: buns, rolls and other delicacies - laid out exactly as they were on the day of the earthquake. And it's a no-go shop. Behind wire fences. And if you look in the reflection of the window, you can see across the street... Across the street this whole frontage has gone. The bricks have been tidied away now. Cars drive past. So do pedestrians. And the sign insists "We Are Open..." The insides of the shops and office spaces are open to the elements exactly as they were on the day of the earthquake....

These are boxes of shoes all stacked on shelves - many of them - but the whole brick frontage has gone. And next door another office. Open to View. The force of the earthquake was huge. Walls and materials that were massive (dense and weighty), like brick and stone were literally tossed to one side - while the rest of the building (made of wood, lighter and more resilient material) shook back into place. More or less anyway.

I cycled along the avenues until I came more to the Eastern side of the city, by the Avon. The streets were dusty and deserted. Still a lot of dry sand piled in the streets, blowing. Nobody about. Many red-stickered homes. Few cars. Almost expected a tumble-weed to blow down the street. And yet the sun was out and it was a brilliant day. I came along the street because I saw workers up to their eyeballs in sewage repairs. I can't keep away from sewage systems. In the background is a heritage pumping station. The classic brick shithouse. The orange box is a powerful pump. It's taking all the wastewater from a manhole, and pumping it direct into the Avon flowing behind the trees. Residents may be able to flush their loos - and here I could see where it was actully going. The workers were fixing the manhole, and three broken sewer mains. Here's another view of the site. What is interesting is the angle that the pump station is on. It's actually leaning about 10 degrees toward the river....

Here it is close up. Heritage for sure. In one piece. But knocked right off its foundations. You can get an idea of how much the ground has moved and dipped from where the pump station building has ended up. Underneath it is a 20 foot deep sump into which wastewater used to flow, and then was pumped to other trunk sewers, and hence to Bromley wastewater treatment plant. Now, some sewers run uphill. Others are not existant. and others fractured. You really wonder about the wisdom of repairing a system which is at so much risk of liquifaction, and ground movement next time... The NZ Herald headline after the Japan earthquake shouted: "Japan's earthquake 8000 times more powerful than Christchurch". (That's what you get when compare a 6.3 magnitude earthquake with an 8.9 one. Richter scale.) But this simple sum ignores what happens on land. That calculation is energy/hectare. And that comes down to ground acceleration. At Fukushima, ground acceleration was .35 gravity. Christchurch CDB it was 1.1 gravity. In Heathcote Valley it got up to 2.1 gravity. In the CBD the Christchurch earthquake was 3 times more powerful and destructive than on land in Japan. This is because the Chch epicentre was 4km from the CBD and 5km deep, whereas in Japan the epicentre was 130km offshore and 32 km deep. No Tsunami in Chch of course.

Further along the road the scale of the ground movement is evident with this damage to the road and verge.

Concrete gutter sections and road seal tossed around and swallowed up in cracks as the ground heaved... cracks carved through the ground....

...and into this adjacent graveyard. A sad sight by the road. Likely to be one of the last parts of the garden city to be fixed. As one person said to me, "they're already dead...."

But it is poignant. This granite memorial has stood proudly here for the best part of a century. You can see the cast iron retaining post that was there to stop the column from moving. But the force of the earthquake - particularly the upward acceleration, followed by rapid downward and sideways acceleration would have literally thrown this column skywards, then pulled the base down, away from the column, which then toppled sideways, and broke into pieces. And then, adding insult to that injury, the ground shook further liquifying the sand beneath, which oozed up around the pieces....

And in this part of the cemetery, you can see the marble pages of a memorial, almost as if the winds of time have turned the whole place into a landscape like a beach. Full of memories. But memories which will be erased and covered by the passage of time. Leaving only sand, rippling in the wind....

Proposed Three Kings "Clean" Landfill

This is a recent photo of Three Kings Quarry, operated by Winstone Aggregates. It is located in the middle of Three Kings Volcano - which was formed about 15,000 years ago. Several cones were formed. Three of these were prominent. Two have since been quarried away. Aggregate has been used for roading and other construction projects. Winstone Aggregates have operated the quarry since the 1920's, though quarrying has occurred there for over 150 years.

The red ring on this map shows the approximate location of the quarry. Most Aucklanders are not aware of its existence. From time to time local community groups have expressed concerns about activities there including dust from quarrying and truck movements and so on. A few years ago I was drawn into an issue that emerged. The quarry had been dug deep enough that groundwater was seeping into the floor of the quarry from adjacent aquifers and other underground water sources, and Winstones applied to "dewater" the quarry. This required water to be pumped out and disposed of. That was one issue. Another related issue was when Winstone Aggregates applied to have this water inserted into Auckland's water supply. They wanted to become a bulk water supplier alongside/in competition with Watercare. While the water was very clean - potable - concerns were raised that it would not be treated reliably to the same standard as existing drinking water supplies.

This is a recent aerial photo of the quarry. In 2009 Auckland Council and Auckland Regional Council processed resource consent applications from Winstone Aggregates (owned now by Fletcher Construction Ltd), to change the activity at the quarry from being a quarry to being a landfill. The application was for "cleanfill" to be dumped there - around 3 million cubic metres of it over a ten year period or so. There were many submissions against this proposal raising many issues including from dust and truck movements, but also concerns about what the resulting land would be used for/suitable for, and - critically - what effect a landfill would have on Auckland's underground water resources. In particular the large freshwater aquifers that underly much of Auckland and which are used by a few select organisations - including the Zoo - for their water supply.

This photo from Auckland Council's website shows the area in 1940. You can see a number of small quarry faces in the area.

This picture was taken in 1959. From time to time other activities have occurred on the site including storage of aggregate and storage of diesel fuel and lube oils and explosives.

This picture is dated 1966.

This one is dated 2001....

And this one is dated 2009.... I am at a loss to understand how Three Kings Quarry owner, Winstone Aggregates, was granted consent by the Auckland Regional Council a year and a half ago to fill the Mt Eden Road quarry - unlined and without a leachate collection system - with waste material that is permitted to contain elevated levels of contaminants including arsenic, copper, zinc and hydrocarbons. This and other related resource consent decisions have been appealed to the Environment Court. I understand this appeal is set down for a two week hearing beginning Monday, March the 7th The Mt Eden Road Quarry – also known as Three Kings Quarry - is above, and drains into, a large fresh water aquifer which is already a water source for some users, and which is a back-up drinking water source for Auckland in the event of a natural disaster affecting existing bulk water pipelines. The proposed Mt Eden Road quarry landfill project may result in Auckland’s aquifers becoming too contaminated over time to be used as a much-needed water source. Why should Auckland take that risk when industry best practice options exist to avoid it? If a natural disaster hit in Auckland – volcano or earthquake – good civil defence planning would be reliant upon Auckland’s underground water resources to meet the need for drinking water. Surely Auckland Council would not support any activities which might degrade the quality of Auckland’s underground water resources. And surely Watercare, whose duties include taking a leadership role in regard to Auckland's water resources - including underground resources - would be requiring this project to be cleaner than clean, and to adopt best practice. More later....

Garden City’s Cheeky Opportunity

New Zealand’s Garden City has the opportunity to re-invent itself from the bottom up.

I’m talking sewage.

Consider the large amount of clean water that is used to carry even a small quantity of human excreta. With each flush, over 10 litres of clean water goes down the drain. This clean water which is flushed down the toilet goes into a traditional sewage system. We reticulate all sewage solids and wastewater in a big network of ceramic pipes for centralised treatment. The Romans had the idea for that first and it was perfected by the British almost 200 years ago. It’s ancient.

In the absence of government support or massive rates, traditional sewage solutions threaten to bankrupt communities. Especially if sewer networks need to be rebuilt.

Traditional sewage systems are atrociously expensive to build today primarily because of the labour intensive drainage network. Sewage treatment plants themselves are relatively cheap. It’s the thousands of kilometres of pipes that cost seriously big money. And where pipes are laid in ground that moves – forget shakes – cracks open up in the pipes letting rainwater in and causing overflows, and letting sewage out polluting more water — invariably rivers and ponds and beachwater.

For more than a decade – as a Councillor - I have immersed myself in Auckland’s sewage problems, projects and costs. I chaired North Shore City Council’s Works & Environment Committee’s recommendation ten years ago to impose a fixed charge per ratepayer of $500 annually to reduce leaks from the city’s fragile sewer network. We debated the issue at length. I suggested – half in jest – that we’d be better off with old style night-cart collection of excreta, central composting, and recycling back to land. At least we’d know it was being collected, and we’d also know it wouldn’t end up on the beaches.

North Shore City ratepayers have invested close to a billion dollars in its sewage system. And it still leaks. Much of Auckland is built on soft Waitemata clays and sandstone. It’s shifting slowly all the time, cracking the sewer network. The damage is slow but it’s relentless. And so are the repairs and the costs.

Much of Christchurch is built on alluvial gravels and sand. Its sewer networks lie in ditches dug into this substrate which liquefies in even a small earthquake. Given the choice of developing Christchurch today as a greenfield site – subject to earthquakes from time to time - engineers today would surely advise against a ceramic pipe based wastewater network.

Ten years ago the Auditor General concluded that “it is difficult for Thames Coromandel District Council to demonstrate that the sewage reticulation option is indeed the best use of ratepayer’s funds.” That report was part of a long running battle between the majority of Cooks Beach lot owners and a Council determined to fix septic tank problems by imposing a traditional reticulated sewage scheme. I know Christchurch City is not like Cooks Beach.

My interest in sewage alternatives has taken me round the world and times have changed, as Sydney Water found when it investigated developments in the United States and Europe, after facing estimates of between $16,000 and $70,000 per lot to connect houses to new centralised sewage systems.

They found that on site wastewater services are used in 50% of lots in Norway and 25% of all lots in the USA. On-site servicing is no longer seen as a temporary measure in the USA where 35% of new city housing developments are now on-site serviced. Beverley Hills in LA is all on-site, and Barbra Streisand was one who lobbied the council to keep it that way. The US Environmental Protection Agency has advised the US government that “decentralised systems, where properly managed, could protect water quality over the long term and do so at lower cost than conventional systems in many communities.”

The most modern systems used in US urban environments combine sophisticated on-site primary treatment tanks, which retain and biodigest solids and need emptying every ten years or so, and small-gauge leak-proof pipes which reticulate the liquid effluent only, to either a centralised treatment plant, or to small local treatment facilities. Some of these use vacuum systems or small pumps to send effluent through leak-proof plastic pipes which can bend and move with ground movement.

While modern centralised wastewater treatment plants in New Zealand are using cleaner technology, the fact is that traditional sewage reticulation pipe networks are dreadfully leaky, and environmental disasters in themselves. Even without an earthquake.

It is difficult to justify their construction and use in coastal environments if the goal is to protect and preserve water quality in the long term.

It is no longer flush it and forget it in Christchurch. Every day people are faced with the personal challenge of what to do with their own, and their children’s excrement. Call it human bio-solids. Right now a system of Portaloos and regular collection is being rolled out across Christchurch.

The collected bio-solids will contain toilet paper and some sterile urine. But will not be contaminated with heavy metal trade wastes that get tipped into the sewer. It will not be diluted with thousands of litres of water. It will be pure. Ripe for composting and re-use. It can be developed into a modern, resilient and responsible sanitation system.

Christchurch has the opportunity to re-invent itself from the bottom up.