Piha domain to reopen for summer despite council recommendations

After being closed for almost 5 months because of concerns over flooding risks, a popular Auckland campground will reopen on Monday.

The Waitakere Ranges local board voted unanimously on Thursday evening to allow overnight camping to return to Piha domain, against the recommendations of Auckland Council staff.

The decision was met with relief by camp manager Fiona Anderson.

"My campers will be so pleased. And obviously I'm pleased. I now have an ability to earn a living again."

Auckland Council asked Anderson to close the camp in June as it assessed the flood risk. She hasn't been able to open it since.

At last night's meeting council staff presented 2 options. The first was to stop overnight camping at Piha domain, effectively a permanent closure.

The second option, opening the campground for this summer. Council staff recommended the first, the local board chose the second.

An Auckland council statement said reopening is subject to "flood warning systems, monitoring, evacuation procedures and other operational controls being implemented".

Anderson said she was already satisfied those conditions.

"I'm opening on Monday, baby," She said.

"I've done my TARP (trigger action response plan). I've had it independently reviewed by a health and safety lawyer and she informs me we're good to go."

Anderson said she was not opening this weekend so that the Piha community could celebrate.

"It's party time, it almost feels wrong that I won't be having a drink because I've been sober for 20 years, but this is not an occasion to let the boat slip".

The Piha campground is on a flood plain and part of the site flooded in 2018. A council report that year found future flooding could result in loss of life.

Anderson said she had since closed off a third of the camp site along the Piha stream and had robust processes in place to manage weather events.

Mark Allan, who chairs the Waitakere Ranges local board, acknowledged there were risks but felt they could be managed.

"We need to have a conversation with people about that risk. We know that the Waitakere ranges are loved as a wild place. So part of this is accepting this wildness accepting we need to live with it".

But the west is only getting wilder with increased severe weather events.

"Around the country we're going to be facing this issue more and more with climate change," Allen said.

"We have noticed it in the ranges. We're having more high rainfall impact events. Our ground is already unstable and we had so many slips after Gabrielle. We're still repairing them now.

"But it is the kind of conversation that we're all going to need to have and we're all going to need to consider it."

Piha isn't the only campground in the Auckland region under scrutiny.

Last month the council met to look at landslide risks in the region and overnight accommodation sites were on the agenda.

"We've got a number of campgrounds that we operate ourselves in terms of some of the regional parks and we've got other operators like Fiona who are operating campgrounds under a lease situation" Auckland Council's Mace Ward said.

"We're working with those as part of our own campgrounds. We've got trigger action response plans in place and measures in place And with other leasehold campgrounds, we're implementing that as well".

Last night's meeting attracted around 80 Piha locals. Many spoke in the public forum in support of the campground, with one describing it as the heart of the community.

Allen said the board listened to feedback from the Piha community.

"We could see that if we didn't have that campground there, we could see there was going to be a collapse of a whole series of businesses in the area".

Meanwhile, camp manager Fiona Anderson is crossing her fingers that the campground will be allowed to stay open beyond this Summer.