Protection works better than red zone – resident
His home may sit below potentially deadly boulders, but white-zoned Heathcote Valley resident Roland Logan wants to stay put.
The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) will announce the fate of the remaining 37 white-zoned Port Hills properties tomorrow and Hammerton Ln homeowner Logan hopes his white-zoned property will go green.
But he does not think authorities have any appetite to protect homes. Logan recently found extensive wire mesh, metal cable and concrete remediation work done on a hillside a few hundred metres south of his home.
The work in the southern end of the Heathcote Quarry Reserve, above Bridle Path Rd, included completely wrapping a 7-metre-tall rock outcrop in steel mesh and cabling with scores of bolts anchoring the metalwork to the rock face.
Numerous smaller rock outcrops in the area have been bolted, encased in mesh, and tied with cables and at least one has a square-metre cube of concrete wedged under it as an anchor.
The work cost the landowner, Christchurch City Council, $220,440 and was done late last year. The council says the work was only "make safe", not permanent, and to protect Bridle Path Rd.
In the last land rezoning announcement, three properties worth almost $3.5 million between the rock work and the road went green.
Logan believes that shows affordable remediation could be done above his nearby home to let him stay.
He said his and his neighbours' land would be much easier to protect using remediation due to a large shelf created by a former quarry and fewer large rock outcrops.
"The easier stuff right next door is not being remediated and it might be going red," he said.
He has enlisted a geotechnical engineer to write a report that can be used in a Department of Building and Housing review of Cera's land-zoning decision.
City council environment general manager Jane Parfitt said $6m had been spent on hundreds of similar remediation projects on the Port Hills since the quakes.
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