Wainui Beach holds significant cultural, social, and economic importance to the region. However, it also faces long-standing challenges with erosion and coastal management.

The Wainui Coastal Adaptation Plan aims to provide a forward-looking strategy for managing current and future coastal hazard risks at Wainui Beach. The plan will guide sustainable development, protection structures, and emergency management, while preserving key values like the natural environment, habitats, surf breaks, and access for recreation and kai gathering.

Help us shape Wainui's future. Tell us what you think.

The Wainui Beach Erosion Management Strategy (WBEMS) was developed in 2003 and then updated in 2014. The WBEMS 2014 update included a lot of community engagement and was considered a successful process, however implementation of the plan has proved difficult.

In 2020 a review of the WBEMS 2014 was completed by Coastal Management Collective. This review looked at the strategy and implementation.

What we're doing now

We're reviewing the Tairāwhiti Resource Management Plan which includes the natural hazard and coastal plan chapters. It is a good time to revisit the WBEMS and update it in line with current best practices for adaptation planning.

The Wainui Coastal Adaptation Plan will then be used to guide the rules in the the plan as well as the ongoing management of assets and protection structures and our emergency planning and response.

You can switch between layers using the toggle in the upper right corner. Potential coastal erosion hazard zones are based upon industry standard erosion equations, with the inputs updated from detailed analysis of the beach monitoring data. Inundation layers which are representations of inundation levels from the most recent modelling work, for the different climate change scenarios. Assets at risk shows an overlay of assets across the hazard projections. The assets include buildings, carparks, roads and stairs (public and private).