Climate change... or sewer pipe?

The other day I watched Hutt City mayor David Ogden on Breakfast TV blaming "climate change" for the landslip in Kelson [as I blogged here]. But what's this:

Meanwhile, geologist Grant Dellow, of crown research institute GNS, said a cracked, slowly leaking [council] sewer pipe might have caused the Kelson slip...

Mr Dellow and Earthquake Commission assessors were among several experts to inspect the site yesterday. He believed a sewer pipe from one of the suburb's main lines might have cracked earlier this month, leaking water into the infill land...

Mr Dellow said the Kelson slip was the first in the area since 1997, when land was washed away about 500 metres from the present site.

And from the Herald:

Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences geologist Grant Dellow said the Kelson housing area was a "cut and fill" subdivision, done probably in the 1960s or 1970s when geotechnical practices were not as stringent as they are now.

So is this another global warming myth de-bunked then? As Owen McShane suggested here the other day, 'climate change' is having an effect: that is, the belief in climate change is having an effect. Expect this incident, for example, to have an effect on council District Plans for some time to come, despite the suggestion that it was drainage, not climate change that caused it.

RELATED: Building, Global Warming, Politics-NZ