Farmers welcome changes to freshwater regulations

Late last month, the Government’s Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill passed its third reading through Parliament.

RMA Reform minister Chris Bishop says this marks the second of three phases of the Government’s resource management reforms.

“We repealed the previous government’s excessively complicated reforms through Phase One before Christmas last year,” Bishop says.

“Now in Phase Two we’re implementing a one-stop-shop, fast-track consenting regime, legislating for a raft of ‘quick fixes’ to the interim RMA through two Amendment Bills and a suite of changes to national direction, and then in Phase Three we’ll fully replace the RMA with a new regime guided by private property rights.”

The move has roundly been welcomed by farmers, says Federated Farmers resource management spokesperson Mark Hooper.

He says that the Government’s approach is a pragmatic, commonsense one that will “allow farmers to get on with farming without a heap of needless cost and complexity that added very little environmental benefit”.

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“The Government made it very clear that the national direction for freshwater was going to be changes and that councils should hold off notifying new plans,” Hooper told Rural News.

“By continuing to plough ahead implementing the previous Labour government’s freshwater rules, councils left them no real choice but to intervene.”

Hooper says that had the Government allowed councils to continue, there would have been significant duplication, “wasted” ratepayer money, and confusion with constantly changing local rules.

“It’s a big deal for farmers and we’re pleased we were able to get the result for our members,” he adds.

He says the Government has proven that it wants to work collaboratively with landowners and farmers in the RMA reform process.

“In the current RMA amendment bills the Government have been really engaged and responsive to our concerns,” he says.

“They’ve also made some really practical changes where we’ve been able to show things aren’t working, or where the interpretation by the courts has created huge uncertainty or added unnecessary compliance costs.”

The RMA reform process is only just getting underway now, but we’re really comfortable with the high-level direction they’re heading in and think our resource management rules are going to land in a much better place than what we’ve seen in the past,” he says.

One of the actions the bill sets out to limit is local councils’ ability to notify new freshwater plans from 22 October 2024 until the introduction of a replacement for the controversial National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management (NPS-FM).

While this was largely anticipated, with Government Ministers signalling in the initial draft bill back in April that changes to the freshwater management system would be happening, some had gone ahead to include freshwater management regulations in line with the previous government’s rules in their regional plans.

In Otago, this came to a head when Otago Regional Council (ORC) chief executive Richard Saunders announced that its paper on the council’s proposed Land and Water Regional Plan (pLWRP) would be withdrawn just 24 hours before the plan was set to be voted on.

ORC chair Gretchen Robertson says that while the council had worked with the government in the lead-up to the proposed vote, the bill marked a change.

“We now need to take some time to consider the implications of this for the Otago community who still need these issues to be addressed,” Robertson says.

Current waste and water plans in the region will still be operative so, for those who are already consent holders, it will be “business as usual”, she says.

“This will give us time to understand the changes the government is bringing in with the review and replacement of the NPS-FM.”

Robertson says the pause on the plan will not stop council from continuing to work with local communities and local iwi to improve freshwater in the region, “it is a pause for the planning process”.

“The good work of protecting and enhancing our environment will continue across Otago.”

Little Impact

Meanwhile, Environment Southland says the Amendment Bill is unlikely to have a significant impact on the region.

“Environment Southland already has a mostly operative regional plan, the Southland Water and Land Plan, that manages activities like stock exclusion and intensive winter grazing, so the Government’s amendments are unlikely to have significant impact for Southland,” Environment Southland general manager strategy, policy and science Rachel Miller told Rural News.

Miller says that the council confirmed in September that it would focus its freshwater work programme on working with the community directly and making minor improvements to the Southland Water and Land Plan through a plan change. “Considering the RMA amendment halting plan changes in 2025, we are assessing our options,” she says. “Government has signalled a revised National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management will be released in early 2025 which may require some changes to the regional plan.”