Subj : Council locking in freshwater regulations ahead of law change To : All From : News Person Date : Sat Mar 02 2024 01:08 pm The Taranaki Regional Council will try to embed Te Mana o te Wai into its new freshwater plan before the Government re-writes resource laws. The Government has pledged to overturn freshwater regulations and resource management law to favour easier development. The coalition deal includes Act's policy to replace freshwater policy and standards "to rebalance Te Mana o te Wai to better re?ect the interests of all water users". At this week's Taranaki Regional Council (TRC) meeting, councillors were told those law changes will take at least two years - so the council had to continue work on its new Freshwater Plan under the current law. The council's policy manager Lisa Hawkins said the Government intended to write a specific law to remove Te Mana o te Wai from resource consenting processes, but has said nothing about changing its place in planning laws. Te Mana o te Wai - an idea introduced by John Key's Government in 2014 - is at the core of current rules. Labour beefed up Te Mana o te Wai in 2017 to make the health and well-being of waterways the top priority in freshwater regulation, with human water needs second and other users third (commercial, cultural and social). Te Mana o te Wai diluted Councils must protect the mauri - or life force - of waterways and actively involve tangata whenua in making freshwater decisions, policies and plans. TRC's first Maori constituency councillor Bonita Bigham said people were worried Te Mana o te Wai was being diluted. "If [consent] applicants aren't expected to be able to respond to Te Mana o te Wai provisions, what effect will it really have?" Lisa Hawkins described how in a few years Te Mana o te Wai considerations would be baked-in to the Freshwater Plan, alongside other council environmental plans that govern consenting. "We should have all new plans in place, and [if] they've given effect to Te Mana o te Wai as it stands at the moment - or whatever that might look like going forward with the new Government - then that plan has automatically kind of addressed those considerations." Bigham said it was "implicit rather than expressed". Hawkins replied: "It's implicit, exactly." Farmers claim consultation is 'coercive' Presented alongside a startlingly blunt assessment of the declining health of Taranaki waterways, Hawkins triggered objections from the farmers' lobby at the council table. Federated Farmers Taranaki president and representative to TRC Leedom Gibbs accused officers of coercive consultation. "It is my understanding that quite oftent consultation is very directive in the way that it goes out. "Like, with the consultation that was done in September, it was very hard to not agree with statements. There's not a lot of room in there to say `but'." Dairy farmer Donald McIntyre has been a regional councillor for 16 years - during which time he too served as Federated Farmers Taranaki president. He said things couldn't be too bad, because people still swam at his on-farm wedding-and-events venue. "I live on a lake and don't see any diminishing amount of people coming and swimming in the water that comes into my lake, which has come off a farm and catchment. "It's not as dramatic as what you're putting down on paper here." First-term councillor and until lately Taranaki Federated Farmers executive member Donna Cram - last year's Fonterra Dairy Woman of the Year - agreed with McIntyre's lament. Farming and industry improving water quality McIntyre said farmers were improving water quality anyway. "The plan will make it a lot easier to do that, but we are already on a journey towards there, aren't we?" Cram responded: "And industry of course, leading that, through us." McIntyre warned council staff would struggle to get support from farmers sick of "silly rules". "Over the last two or three years, that goodwill has been burnt pretty severely." Policies that have been attempted up until now have been not workable or fit for purpose, McIntyre said. "And so people have switched off." Bigham had the opposite view of council relationships on the ground. No more delays "This council's gone a long way to building trust and good faith within our community and I think it's critical that we look at whatever it takes to make sure that our communities can participate in those conversations." The Government extended the deadline for freshwater plans by three years to 2027 so councils wouldn't be forced to reset local rules before the yet-to-be-written laws are passed. But TRC chairperson Charlotte Littlewood said the overdue renewal of the 22-year-old plan had already been delayed many times. "The fact that we haven't implemented any of the National Policy Statements yet, including two from the National Party, is quite a significant statement. but there is a point where we have to draw a line in the sand and actually do this." After a quarter of a century at the council table, ninth-term councillor Neil Walker is Littlewood's deputy. The former senior Fonterra scientist waited till the end of the debate for a quiet request of the chair. "Get the communications working properly too, to indicate that were taking [a] sensible, measured approach to all this." Blunt update on degraded waterways Taranaki's regional councillors were given a startlingly blunt presentation on the region's freshwater by their environment quality director Abby Matthews this week. For decades Taranaki Regional Council has said looking after rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands is really, really hard in such intensively farmed lands - but that over time with help from farmers and industry things were slowly getting better. Not any more. Matthews told councillors efforts to improve waterway health do work - but traction is slipping and things are getting worse as the climate changes. She said people have had enough. "We've heard from our community that the current state of fresh water is unacceptable to them." "What we need to do now is continue working with the community and figure out what's achievable, what's workable, what we can actually do on the ground." "The longer we leave that and the longer we take to do that the bigger the problem becomes." Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air. --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Windows/64) * Origin: S.W.A.T.S BBS Telnet swatsbbs.ddns.net:2323 (63:10/102) .