Auckland slips will take months to clear, says council engineer

Some slips from summer’s bad weather will take months to clear, says a senior Auckland Council engineer.

Ross Roberts, Auckland Council engineering resilience head, said it was difficult to give a timeframe for some particularly complex slips affecting roads in Rodney.

Movement from slips at Muriwai hasslowed down significantly, but Roberts said clumps of 1-2 cubic metres are still falling off the crests.

Roberts estimated there are between 3000 and 10,000 slips across Auckland but it will be 12 months before an accurate number is known.

GNS Science, which has a programme to map landslides across New Zealand, is working through a manual process and a few different options to do the count, he said.

The figures emerged at a high-level overview of landslides to the council’s transport and infrastructure committee today.

Roberts also highlighted difficulties arising from slips across council and private land.

“The recovery team is set up to try and help coordinate that response to make sure we are treating everyone equally, but we haven’t got to the stage of negotiating with individual landowners,” said Roberts.