The ongoing saga of Council incompetence seemed to just go on compounding, with their internal inquiry as to why everything went so wrong more concerned with covering backs than with either the environment or the systemic causes of their failures.

It seemed that at least the Council would have learned that introducing a hard element into a soft environment would cause massive erosion, but no, they just kept on repeating the same stupid mistake, as they had been doing for the last fifteen years.

Doug Armstrong had insisted for several years that the City Council stormwater discharge was not causing erosion adjacent to the pump station, although this was obvious for anyone to see after every modest rainfall. Finally he admitted his error and work began to dig in several manholes.

The City Council had refused to get the necessary coastal permit for the gabion walling so that they would not need to listen to the considerable amount of coastal expertise which was available, and which could have avoided the whole fiasco.

They had learnt nothing from all this and proceeded with the stormwater manholes once again without getting the necessary permits. The water right for discharging stormwater from Peacock Street into the harbour had expired nine years before, and it had never been renewed. All the work was illegal.

The City Councillors followed their time honoured tradition of assuming that those in power did not need permits. Attitudes to stormwater and erosion may have changed dramatically in the last forty years but not every engineer has noticed.