‘You feel like crying’: The homeowners paying tens of thousands to hold back the sea

Sunday, 5 July 2026

Peter Maich has spent between $40,000 and $60,000 on rock protection work to prevent his property near Westport from eroding into the Buller River.

Simon Rooke paid $25,000 for a 900-tonne boulder wall to protect his Granity beachfront properties from high seas and gravel damage.

University of Auckland professor Mark Dickson says the need for private rock walls reflects decades-old development decisions made without considering the impact of rising sea levels.

Before Peter Maich built protection works along his property, he used to watch pieces of his land fall away and feel like crying.

His home, just outside Westport, sits on a riverbank, close to the river mouth, where floodwater, high tides and stormy seas have eaten into the land.

“You’re sitting down there and you’re watching your land and you go, ‘well, that's another square metre gone’… you feel like crying,” Maich said.

“I think I’ve lost about a metre a year over about 20 years… it’s a substantial erosion.”

Some years were worse than others, Maich said, and the response has not been cheap.

Maich estimates he’s spent between $40,000 and $60,000 on private protection works, including thousands of tonnes of rock and concrete, to armour the bank.

“I just forked it out,” he said. “It’s a horrific amount of money. I would like to have not spent it, but I had to.”

Westport sits on low-lying land between the Tasman Sea and Buller River, where coastal erosion and river flooding have been long-running concerns.

Maich said he received consent from the West Coast Regional Council and carried out the work in stages, putting in about 2000 to 3000 tonnes of rock and other material over several years.

The barrier is about 5m high and “a few metres” thick. Maich said it had not shifted or sunk in the last seven years, and he was “fairly confident” it would hold.

“If it doesn’t, I've got two years left to run on my… resource consent. I'll get a whole lot more rock, potentially concrete, and make it bigger and stronger… just throw brute force [at it].”

Maich said neighbours had followed with their own self-funded protection work.

“…As far as I’m aware… there’s no assistance for anybody, not for private property, not for beachfront properties.”

People who bought exposed land had to accept some risk, he said, but assistance should be considered where river flows, development work or other factors beyond a homeowner’s control affected their property.

“The big picture around the Westport area is what are we going to do? What’s the most effective for actual overall protection?”

Meanwhile in Granity…

About 28km up the coast, Simon Rooke also paid privately to protect his beachfront properties in Granity, spending about $25,000 on a substantial rock wall after high seas pushed gravel and rocks towards them.

Rooke called the structure “the biggest, strongest wall in Granity”. Made up of about 900 tonnes of boulders, it had done what it was meant to do, he said.

Rooke doesn’t believe Granity is disappearing into the sea, but said rock protection had become common among beachfront property owners.

“Everybody I know that’s had the sea come in… they’ve all got some rocks out the front now,” said Rooke.

A few truckloads of large rocks placed in front of a property could cost about $4000 to $6000.

“It’s a bit of a no-brainer if you live by the sea and you’ve got a million-dollar view, and the sea right in the backyard.”

Problem decades in the making

University of Auckland environment professor Mark Dickson said homeowners paying for rock walls and other protection pointed to a problem decades in the making.

“It reflects a legacy of coastal development decisions made decades ago, when subdivisions were consented in coastal areas without full consideration of the dynamic nature of shorelines naturally eroding… and without consideration of the likely impacts of sea-level rise.”

A 2025 Ministry for the Environment report found about 219,000 residential properties were in coastal inundation and inland flood zones in 2023, representing an estimated $180b in assets.

The report also estimated some 1300 residential properties in coastal inundation zones, worth about $900m at current prices, could each suffer at least 20% damage in one or more extreme events between 2026 and 2060.

Dickson said it was understandable that homeowners wanted to protect their properties, but ad hoc private work could cause unintended problems, including shifting erosion further along the coast or locking communities into short-term fixes.

He said the situation showed New Zealand had identified coastal hazards, but had not yet settled on what the response should be, or who should fund it.

Who pays, and who decides?

Both Westport and Granity are in the Buller District. The district council said its role was largely through district planning, including the Tai Poutini Plan, which sets rules for development, land use and natural hazard risk across the Buller, Grey and Westland districts.

Group manager regulatory services Simon Bastion, said the West Coast Regional Council had completed a full review of natural hazards on behalf of the three West Coast district councils as part of that plan. There had been significant consultation, including submissions on coastal inundation and new coastal mapping.

But Bastion said councils were still waiting for more direction from central government, after the previous National Adaptation Plan shifted to the National Adaptation Framework. That had a big impact for small councils and communities, he said, because natural hazards and climate adaptation policy direction came from central government.

Minister responds

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said historic development decisions had left communities exposed to increasing risk from natural hazards, and acknowledged many were now facing significant costs to protect properties from the impacts of climate change.

Watts said the Government was developing a “durable, long-term approach” to this through the National Adaptation Framework, which would help communities prepare for future climate risks, while ensuring costs were managed “fairly and responsibly”.

“Planning for how we will share the costs of adapting to climate change over time is an important part of implementing the Framework.

He said the Government planned to make further decisions in its next term.

“It is a complex area and one where it is important to take the time to get things right,” Watts said.

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