Enhancing the natural environment, resilience to coastal erosion and future sea level rise, and creating a safe and accessible place for future generations to enjoy are the key aims of the draft St Clair–St Kilda Coastal Plan released for public feedback today.

As well as proposing an overarching vision and high level management objectives for the coast, the draft plan sets out the short term actions and possible longer term options for St Clair, Middle Beach and St Kilda.

Mayor of Dunedin Aaron Hawkins says the plan has been drafted based on extensive community and stakeholder engagement, as well as input from technical experts, over the past two years.

“The St Clair to St Kilda coastline is highly valued by many different people for many different reasons. How the coast is managed in the future ideally needs to align as closely as possible with how people value the space and want to use it.

“The draft plan sets a direction for future sustainable management of the coast as informed by the community’s collective values and aspirations, as well as their ideas on what could be done to help manage, protect and where possible enhance the coast,” Mr Hawkins says.

DCC Coastal Specialist Tom Simons-Smith says some of the key short term actions proposed in the draft plan include improving public access points to the beach, plantings and sand stockpiling to help in storm responses, and ongoing monitoring and modelling to inform longer term management decisions.

Mr Simons-Smith says the overarching long term management decisions for the coast relate to what will be done to either ‘hold the line’ or accommodate coastal processes and rising seas. These decisions will need to be made for St Clair, Middle Beach and St Kilda, and not in isolation of each other.

“We will be continuing work to help inform these big decisions, but for now, Middle Beach and management of the historic landfill underneath Kettle Park is a real area of focus as we seek to better understand the risk there and provide clarity on the possible future of the site,” he says.

A copy of the draft Whakahekerau–Rakiātea Rautaki Tai (St Clair–St Kilda Coastal Plan), as well as a survey to help people provide feedback, is online at www.dunedin.govt.nz/coastandcommunity.

Feedback is open from today (Monday, 29 November) until Friday, 17 December 2021.

Once the community’s feedback has been received, the draft plan will go to the Council for consideration in early 2022.

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