Recent media coverage of a pending legal battle involving a massive $101 million compensation claim by the BNZ against the Wellington City Council brings into question the involvement of the BECA company, the engineers who designed the structural foundations for the now demolished BNZ building on the Wellington CBD waterfront.
A few years back BECA was engaged by the Greater Wellington Regional Council to audit the Waiohine River flood maps at Greytown in the Wairarapa in response to prolonged challenges by locals questioning their accuracy.
At that time BECA found the flood maps “fit for purpose”
But just 3 months after this audit the flood maps were revoked due to community pressure and Greater Wellington was forced to have them completely re-done.
The new flood maps showed that only a quarter of Greytown would receive flooding in a 100-year rainfall event NOT three-quarters of the town as shown in the original flood maps.
In 2015 Greater Wellington engaged BECA to audit the Pinehaven Stream flood maps
BECA also declared these as “fit for purpose”.
As with Greytown, local residents of Pinehaven have been vigorously challenging the accuracy of these flood maps based on independent expert reports that proved them serious flawed and grossly inflated.
Given BECA’s involvement in the Greytown flood maps audit and perhaps in the BNZ building case it must surely bring into question the accuracy of their audit of the Pinehaven Stream flood maps.
Based on this history local residents are calling for the existing Pinehaven Stream flood maps to be thrown out and new maps commissioned based on accurate data that will provide proper flood protection for Pinehaven and Silverstream.
Issued by the Save our Hills Action Group.
Graham Griffiths
0212 671 758