December 1st 2019: Work hard play hard :-)

While Spring was springing here in Kapiti I started in my new role at the local Council on 21 October. Putting together and managing a new team in the Infrastructure Group, called the Sustainability and Resilience Team. Those two words are probably together with Climate Change the most used words in Councils, Central Government and any type of new media at the moment. In my case three works streams have been put together in one team which is solid waste and waste minimisation (very familiar to me!), energy and carbon management (climate change) and part of emergency management. So the work streams in the team are definitely interconnected with waste being one of the larger contributors to methane emissions, but the day to day is another matter. It will be interesting to see how I can make a team out of 6 people that do different 'things'.
I have already managed to secure two new people for the team, one internal who has already started (knows everything about energy management so that's a good start, the rest we'll learn as we go) and a new admin/support person who starts in the new year. Next week I am interviewing for a new waste minimisation advisor/educator, hopefully we have a full team around February. I will plan a nice day away at our beach retreat to do some fun team building stuff, even just to get to know each other - it always makes a massive difference if you can laugh together and support each other.

Nienke scored some jellyfish at the Kapiti arts trail.

My first two days were filled with hugs and lots of people that were very happy to see me back, including the mayor and councillors, which was a very nice welcome. After that it felt like I have never been away - funny thing that not much happens in the overall scheme of what Council delivers when you are away for 15 months.
As you may have seen in the news, NZ had adopted a change to the already existing Climate Change Act, called the Zero Carbon Act that now sets two goals for NZ; to be 'net zero' in 2050 for all greenhouse gasses except methane (too many cows in NZ..) and methane emissions to be 24-47 % lower than 2017 levels by 2050. Our biggest methane producers are pissing and burping cows but it's also our largest export market so to make sure the elections in 2020 go again in favour of Labour there had to be some compromise to get National (read: every NZ farmer) to actually support this Act.

We shoot so many rabbits, we just burn them. A real plague.

But it's clear that waste, the carbon footprint of everything we do and sea level rise and flooding as a result of climate change are very HOT topics around the world and also have been declared hot topics in our Council. With 6 new Councillors around the table (and the youngest one in New Zealand, 18 year old organiser of the school climate strikes here in Wellington), there is definitely momentum to do some good stuff. During my years in Infrastructure we've had to manage quite a few big recovery operations after big rainfalls and flooding which basically happen every or every other winter. The expected sea level rise in 2050, now that everyone is supporting the science (except for a few Trumpian loonies) is now again a main focus for Kapiti with a long coast line and many houses and roads that are also already noticing changes due to more intense and more frequent storms.
I am running from one meeting and workshop to another as everything is happening really fast now, driven by the 3 yearly government cycle here in NZ. End year two finally some delivery starts happening and than it's a race against the clock to get decisions made before the 'moratorium' on policy making which comes into force I think from July, 3 months before the elections. It's just crazy that short time frame for trying to actually govern. Councils are now dragged into a number of legislation proposals that we have to write submissions for to provide our feedback and workshops to have our say on behalf of local government, like in the National Climate Change Risk Assessment that is now underway. Days like that are interesting and frustrating at the same time because there is such a big gap between the people that work at ministries and develop proposals that are just so disconnected from 'reality', which is where we come in as local councils who need to manage these risks and pay for it - the ivory tower people just talk about it. After that day I was glad I didn't push further to start working at the Ministry for the Environment, I would have been so frustrated already even after a few weeks! Never say never but for now I am happy in Council again with enough to challenge me.

I was not really involved in emergency management earlier, other than being involved in the development of some recovery and disposal plans after the 'big one' (earthquake) that is still overdue in Wellington (now by 60 years). But now this is part of my own job description and I work with our Council Emergency controller. I immediately attended the annual Emergency exercise in our Kapiti Emergency Center where I was on the Operations Desks. That was 'easy' for me as after many years in Infrastructure I do know what is critical and who to call. So after that I was promoted to desk manager right away haha. The exercise was about a volcanic eruption of Mount Taranaki and a giant ash cloud coming our way in three hours time. Quite a good thing to work on and prepare for and interesting as it threw a few people off pace that were used to flooding or earthquake scenarios. It's my tak to make sure we have 2 full shifts of staff trained up to man the emergency centre when things go wrong, which means in total 78 staff. We have about 59 on the list now so will need a few more that will also actually attend the monthly training. Often that is where it goes wrong if people are busy. So I will be exploring that with their managers and motivate people to join in. Being the Kapiti representative in the Regional Life Lines group is another of my tasks, this is the group that manages the critical assets in the Districts. For example the water treatment plant, roads to the airport, fire brigade and medical centres. It's a priority to get these sites working again as as possible.

In NZ a lot of education is rolled out on a continuous bases that you need to have emergency supplies, water for at least 3 days etc etc. However, we also know that our most vulnerable communities basically have no money to have these supplies as they struggle from day to day. That's also part of our Welfare planning and discussions we have. 

Poverty really adds a extra layer to all that I am working on now. Those are the people than cannot prepare for emergencies, not move house when their house if flooded or damaged, pay for insurance or have the energy to worry about their carbon footprint.
When we were travelling in South America and were writing on the blog about all the rubbish dumped everywhere alongside roads and around villages by the locals it did become clear that when you struggle to put food on the table every day your world is small because you are in survival mode. And you don't care about rubbish polluting the environment or burning the Amazon.
This emphasizes the age old political question again on what do we do first? Battle poverty by driving economic growth and than deal with the results of economic growth like climate change? Or are we too late by the time everyone has food on the table because the world will be no longer livable..

In the meantime we are enjoying some beautiful weather here on the Coast, it's been on average 20 degrees here now for weeks, so had to get all the summer shorts and shoes out already.
Last weekend on Friday we heard the stories of Rog and Maya's trip to Egypt, Jerusalem and Jordan - definitely bucket list items, experiencing world history. Maya probably won't visit a museum for the next 10 years haha!

We attended the annual local music event at our local brewery Tuatara - from 4 pm to 11pm so we did well. Lots of pretty good local rock band, especially the band with 4 12-year old lads was a nice surprise, we've got some real talent on the coast. Bring on summer and lots of live music gigs!

The advantage of getting up early with me is that Hans can watch Dutch football over his mums account!

Now that summer has started Hans finally had to find something for the loudspeakers and amplifier in our bedroom. I just did not want to see them anymore. As we could not find anything suitable in the shops Hans decided to make it himself. A bit of left over paint from when our house was build and you'd never guess it has not always been here.

Leading by example as always. My waste free lunch. And my fashionable cooling box.

Hans clearly is affected by the painting bug. Granted, our flagpoles did not look very flash anymore and the southerlies and westerlies had chipped quite some paint away. I was not allowed to park in the car port for a few days as the flag poles were being renovated there. Red painted hockey balls on top and two new flags. Looks like a 5 star hotel ay? OK, not with the wash hanging on the line.

Saturday was a stunner as well so we had a nice lunch in the garden with Guy and Lies and Guy's mum who was visiting New Zealand for the first time.

On the Sunday the weather was a bit patchy so our annual Sims Road drinks with all the neighbours had to move inside, but it was lovely to have everyone catching up over some good old home made nacho's and wine. We will remain the 'Sims Road motor' as nothing happened in the year that we were away - somehow that is what we do apparently :-)

The sky colours orange, the smoke from the fires in Australia.

Hans has been painting away in Otaki Beach and likes the handyman work with good music and company from Dick - working right on the beach with amazing views, pretty good office! I hear is is a hard task master as Dick complains of the lack of a lunch break. No idea why they should be overdoing it, they work harder and deliver much better work than most professional painters will ever do...
He has also done a few days at the Medical Centre to help out with covering holidays and a few more days coming up in December and January. In combination with starting the job of painting our own house after 10 years of occupation, he won't be bored this summer! At the moment he is pimping his 23 year old car by removing rust, prepping it and painting it black. I have to say it starting to look rather flash!

A big car and only a small jack.......

O yes, last week we were in Otaki to pick up some groceries and while Hans was waiting in the car one of the tyres decided to go completely flat within minutes. Because Hans had had so much training in South America, of course changing the tyre was no problem at all. What was interesting though is that even though you are in a car park at a supermarket, no-one comes up to you and offers to help........in South America people would stop always to ask if you needed help. No points for Kiwi's on this front :-(

Tomorrow it's December already and everyone is fully focused on getting the Christmas shopping done, lots of Christmas drinks and lunches on top of a lot that has to be done before the 20th as than nothing happens until end of January. I will have a 2 days off around Christmas which will be nice with our niece Livia and her friend staying our our place for a couple of weeks. And than we'll have our good old new year's party again - the group is getting smaller with kids no longer attending, all grown up and not up for a boring night around the fire anymore :-)