2010 TO 2012

May 2010: HDC and HBRC jointly engage specialist, Dave Serjeant of Merestone Ltd, to advise on the likely success of WOW’s coastal protection plan gaining a resource consent.  
October 2010: WOW ask Hastings District Council to hold off releasing any data from its cost model until all parties can agree on a suitable approach. Council releases numbers to media that shock community and again place bulk of payment on beach front owners through a targeted rate.
13 October 2010: War chest. About 350 people turned out to Elephant Hill Winery to ‘Celebrate and Save the Cape Coast’; the auction raising $40,000 for WOWs coastal protection cause.
2011: HDC and HBRC persist with a ‘managed retreat’ programme to remove up to 100 homes and let the ‘sea have its way’. As in 2008 they again challenge WOW Inc to come up with an affordable and consentable hard engineering option as an alternative.
2011: Mark Lawrence and Tracy Oliver prevented from replacing the 3-metre high wall in front of their seafront property on Clifton Rd after it was damaged by the sea in late 2008.  Legal action taken for failure to gain consents from both councils. A retrospective certificate of acceptance is declined and the couple are fined $3500.  They have already paid $60,000 in compliance costs, including legal, engineering and planning reports to try and legitimise their efforts. 
March 2011: Serjeant Report peer reviewing Steve Moynihan’s proposed seven groyne field plan is finally delivered. It was due in September 2010.  The report advises both councils and WOW that the scheme could be consentable providing further studies are carried out on wave direction and to determine how the characteristics of the river mouth would be affected, and that any Resource Consent application will probably need to be heard through the Environment Court.
May 2011: Determining cost. WOW challenges the Tonkin & Taylor report, funded by HBRC and HDC, as the costing includes errors in the area of impact, the distance between groynes, the size of the groynes and the amount of gravel needed for backfill. The data has not been adjusted for changes made and blew out the budget. Discussions continued. 
November 2011: Despite WOWs efforts, managed retreat was back on the table as a ‘preferred option’ in The Coastal Futures document, part of Hastings 2012-2022 Long-term Plan. 
June 2012: WOW achieved a breakthrough at the HDC annual plan with the council agreeing to take managed retreat off the table for a further two years.
June 2012: WOW presents a significantly revised groyne field proposal, including a first stage with gravel and maintenance. The revised proposal will save HDC at least $4.6 million as it would not have to remove water mains, create new residential road access or acquire new land for an alternative ‘main road quality’ route to Te Awanga and Clifton.