Residents at Port Waikato who built their own seawall to stop the sea taking their homes are now asking Waikato District Council to help pay the $60,000 a year it costs to keep the wall standing.
The $400,000 wall on Sunset Beach, a 366-metre line of hundreds of poles backed with rock, was paid for by the community through the Sunset Beach Surf Lifesaving Trust. RNZ reported on 19 September 2026, in a Local Democracy Reporting story by Jordan Smith, that the full cost of maintaining it now falls on the trust alone, and that people living behind it want local and central government to share the load.
For 74-year-old resident Jo Poland, the wall has been the difference between keeping her house and losing it. Before it went in, she told RNZ, she was losing “at least one metre” of land in every storm, and she had watched swells of up to seven metres eat towards her home.
“You just look out and the sea seems quite high, but usually when I walk down, actually it’s fine and the wall is doing its job,” she said.
She described the simple pleasure of watching a storm from her window, something that had turned to dread as the shoreline crept closer. “There’s nothing like opening those curtains when there’s a storm because there’s no street lights… it started not being such a delight when I was at risk of losing the house, so it’s really made all the difference.”
Sunset Beach, on the black sand coast just south of the Waikato River mouth, has one of the fastest-retreating shorelines in the country. Coastal scientist Jim Dahm told an information afternoon in August 2024 that the shoreline was retreating by an average of about four metres a year, and that even the best-case projection pointed to the loss of another 18 to 20 metres or more by 2050. The district council’s summary of that presentation put it bluntly. “Overall, this is probably the most difficult coast erosion issue in New Zealand at present.”
Dahm’s projections at the time estimated the community hub block could be under threat within four to six years, and king tides in September 2024 damaged the beach car park. Homeowners on Ocean View Road met council staff that year to talk through their options, with managed retreat, the gradual moving of homes and infrastructure away from high-risk ground, among the long-term possibilities on the table.
Rather than wait, locals pushed for a structure to hold the line while longer-term plans were worked out. The trust’s application was decided by an independent commissioner, and on 2 October 2025 the council announced that consent had been granted, with conditions, on a non-notified basis, meaning there was no full public submission process. The council described the wall as a way to protect dunes, community spaces and nearby homes.
By early April 2026 the wall had been in place for about eight weeks, Local Democracy Reporting noted at the time, after a consent fight Beattie said had taken around three years. The trust also holds a 25-year consent from Waikato Regional Council for ongoing sand push-ups, the regular maintenance work it has been paying for itself.
Trust chair Malcolm Beattie, who led the fundraising and the consent campaign, said that arrangement cannot last with the trust carrying everything on its own.
“Local and central [government] should have some skin in the game at least working with us… we’re doing council’s work here but we’re the ones that have got the risk and pay the money,” he told RNZ.
He argued the sum is small next to what councils spend elsewhere, and that the beach is a public space. “If you looked at $60,000 a year for keeping it all contained, they spend more than that on toilet paper. This is where people are coming to recreate and that’s a council responsibility to provide services at the beach.”
Beattie said the current council had taken steps towards a working relationship with the community, but that it remained talk until the “money hits the road”. RNZ sought updated comment from Waikato District Council, which could not respond by deadline.
The wall has not solved every worry for homeowners. Poland told RNZ she has no insurance cover for erosion, because it is classed as “a natural event, not a natural hazard”. She said a 1996 geologist’s report prepared before she built her home made no explicit mention of coastal erosion driven by rising sea levels.
“We get no support at all… there’s a bit of inequity going on from my perspective. As people lose their homes, they go away and they’re quiet because they’re too busy coping with things to keep fighting.”
Her point goes to the heart of a national problem. Who pays when the coast moves, and who pays to hold it back, is a question New Zealand has yet to settle. Councils are wary of taking on open-ended costs for defending private property, while homeowners in places like Port Waikato say they have been left to fend for themselves, unable to insure against the thing most likely to take their homes.
The risks have not stopped people moving in. Ruth Riding bought a coastal home at Port Waikato two months ago to run as an Airbnb, and told RNZ the risk was “absolutely worth taking”, despite a few raised eyebrows at the purchase.
“I think people are just surprised but I think because the seawall had just been put in so there was a lot of hope.”
That hope now rests on a small trust finding $60,000 every year for as long as the sea keeps coming. Whether the district council, the regional council or the Government steps in to share that cost may decide how long a community-built wall can keep holding back one of the most aggressive stretches of coastline in New Zealand.
Should councils help pay to maintain seawalls that communities build themselves, or should the cost stay with the people who live behind them? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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