Bureaucracy gone mad
It has just been brought to my attention that the Waikato Regional Council’s Civil Earthworks and Forestry Monitoring Consultant has sent out the following email to forestry operators on Tuesday afternoon March 24th 2020.
As the heading above says, this directive seems to me to be at the very least heavy handed and at the worst sheer madness.
As you will all be aware the New Zealand Government has advised that the Covid-19 Alert level has been raised to level 3, and within 48 hours the alert level will be raised to 4, all nonessential activities are to cease and therefore you will be offsite during the lockdown.
You will now need to ensure contingencies are in place as soon as possible to ensure your site is shut down, stabilised and all controls are established to best practice guidelines.
Waikato Regional Council would also expect you would have someone inspect the site after significant rain events, provide self-audits including photographs of your sites and to undertake remedial works if required.
If you could please provide an update over the next 48 hours of your site closure plans, provide any relevant details including photographs and key contact for your sites.
Please note in the event of significant non-compliance as a result of site abandonment without appropriate controls which result in breaches of the NES-PF, Regional Plan or Resource Consents our standard enforcement process will apply.
I appreciate this is such a difficult time for everyone, so thank you for putting the effort in to ensure environmental risk is minimised.
Please stay safe and if there is anything I can do to help please feel free to email myself, Connie or Perry as we will be available during the shutdown period.
CJ Sutherland
Civil Earthworks and Forestry Monitoring Consultant to Waikato Regional Council
Bryant Environmental Solutions Ltd
My reasons for saying this are as follows:
Timing: There was at best about 30 hours before the Covid 19 lockdown came into effect which would give very little time to take any of the required actions whilst at the same time trying to ensure an adequate response to the lockdown requirements.
Actions required:
This directive requires operators to ensure sites are shut down stabilised and that all controls are established to Best Practice Guidelines.
Surely this is just the norm for day to day operations and if the operators were not following best practice guidelines then the WRC enforcement staff would have issued them with abatement notices to enforce compliance.
This directive is asking the operators to break the lockdown rules by sending persons out to sites after rain events even though this industry has been deemed not to be an essential industry and therefore one where all personnel are supposed to stay at home self-isolating as required under the Covid 19 Alert level 4. They are asking operators to go out to sites after significant rain events, provide self-audits including photographs of your sites and to undertake remedial works if required.
So we have a requirement to stay at home isolated under the Covid 19 Lockdown rules under alert level 4 and another requirement from the WRC to go to work; which one is the correct action?
Given that the WRC letter emphasises that in cases of significant non-compliance the WRC’s standard enforcement process will apply, will any failure to visit sites after rainfall events result in enforcement actions being undertaken.
Definitely a case of bureaucracy gone mad. Central Government requiring all non-essential work to cease and for all employees and others to take action to self-isolate under the Covid 19 level 4 Alert and the WRC requiring operators to breach these requirements after rainfall events.
Surely it would be an offence to advise a person to breach the law, and in saying that isn’t that what this letter is actually doing.
To me this is just more evidence of why we need to seriously look at reviewing local government and also the RMA.
Andy Loader
Co-Chairman P.L.U.G.