Policy jabs at MfE water meeting

Local body elections drew regional and city council candidates to a Ministry for the Environment (MfE) consultation on a proposed National Policy Statement (NPS) for freshwater. 

The meeting room at the Sudima Hotel was brimming. At one point a speaker paused for a glass of “pure Canterbury water”, to which someone said it probably smelt of chlorine (in Christchurch’s water supply) and another said it was probably nitrate.

At question time, Lan Pham, a Canterbury regional councillor and freshwater ecologist, called for the Government to introduce binding national water standards. It takes too long for regional authorities to agree on timeframes for local action and the delay is “crippling” discussion, she said.

MfE director water, Martin Workman, said it is harder to set a national standard for freshwater than to track progress against a 2050 zero carbon target. There is a lot of difference between catchments and some regions may find it harder to reach a national target, he said.

Personally, Workman said it is important for communities to work through what makes sense for their local areas. 

Questions would include, “how do we want to go toward the pristine end of the spectrum and how long are we going to take to get to that?”

Workman expects a new NPS for freshwater will change the way local authorities and the Government handle resource management consents.

 “We’re seeing, with all this national direction, there’s a lot more Government oversight being proposed to ensure this does have teeth and that we achieve the quality of environment we aspire to,” he said.

The Environmental Protection Authority is setting up an enforcement unit to “help councils take enforcement across the country”.

Under proposed changes to the Resource Management Act, the authority would have the power, as councils do, to take law breakers to court, Workman said.

A North Canterbury farmer, Jamie McFadden, said he has been helping farmers to protect waterways, wetlands and waterways for the last 20 years, but it now appears those landowners would be penalised for being proactive.

“We’ve got some farmers who have a lot of wetlands on their property, which we’ve encouraged them to protect. They’re going to have to incur huge costs under this freshwater legislation.”

McFadden questioned how much analysis is done of the impact of regulation on different farming sectors. Farmers around him in hill country Cheviot feel under siege from a raft of demands, eg freshwater improvements and biodiversity programmes. 

“In our area those traditional sort of hill country farmers are getting out because they’re sick of it – the amount of regulation and constant penalising of good farmers -- and they’re getting out.”

McFadden is part of a group -- the Rural Advocacy Network -- which walked away from the Hurunui-Waiau water zone committee. The group accused Environment Canterbury of using the province’s zone committees to pursue its own agenda.

A Fish and Game officer at the meeting said this is the first time in her nine years with the organisation that she feels hopeful about improvements in freshwater quality.

But a Banks Peninsula farmer, Pam Richardson, urged policymakers to be careful what they wish for.