Here we are nearly at the end of another year (2021) and I thought that it was a good time to look back on what has happened so far in relation to the Waikato Regional Council’s Proposed Plan Change 1.
The proposed plan change: background and legislation
Healthy Rivers/Wai Ora: Proposed Waikato Regional Plan Change 1 was promoted as an opportunity to protect the environment and ensure that what we value as a community would be preserved for future generations.
Developed alongside iwi and key stakeholders, the proposed plan change was one of the largest plan changes of its kind in New Zealand, applying to approximately 10,000 properties and covering a land area of 1.1M hectares within the Waikato and Waipā river catchments.
The proposed plan sought to reduce the amount of contaminants entering into the Waikato and Waipā catchments to achieve our Vision and Strategy/Te Ture Whaimana o Te Awa o Waikato.
It was also designed to give effect to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2014.
Notification of Proposed Plan Change 1
On 15 September 2016 Council passed a resolution to notify Proposed PC1. Proposed PC1 was subsequently publicly notified on 22 October 2016.
The resolution to notify PC1 was passed on the casting vote of the Chairperson, Paula Southgate even though she had given assurances, that should this position of a tied vote arise, the Chair would vote to maintain the status quo.
This being the first of many contentious issues and decisions surrounding the Proposal!
P.L.U.G. Primary Land Users Group was formed in part due to the huge amount of opposition to the proposed plan change 1. This opposition was against the proposed methods of achieving water quality improvement, not the actual aim of improvement.
PLUG had maintained from the very early discussions that the process of designing PC1 was flawed and not representative of all stakeholders’ views and that the proposal was not fit for purpose.
Part Withdrawal
Public notice was given on 3 December 2016 of the Proposed Waikato Regional Plan Change 1 – Waikato and Waipa River Catchments being withdrawn in part.
This withdrawal was due to the lack of consultation with the Hauraki Iwi and resulted in the part of the proposed plan change that covered the Hauraki Iwi’s area being withdrawn until adequate consultation with the Iwi had been completed.
This withdrawal was just the first of many issues that PLUG believed supported our position, that the PC1 process had been flawed from the start and that the proposal itself was not fit for purpose.
Notification of Variation 1
On 10 April 2018, council notified Variation 1 to Proposed Plan Change 1 for public submissions.
At the end of the submission period this proposal (PC1) had attracted more submissions in opposition than any other planning proposal either before this, or since then up to the present day.
There was a reoccurring theme throughout nearly all of the submissions that the proposed plan change was not fit for purpose and the submissions were almost universally against the process, not the objective of improved water quality.
The Planning Process
The plan change was developed using a collaborative process working in partnership with Iwi. Those who were most likely to be affected by the changes were represented by a Collaborative Stakeholders Group (CSG), that had been developing the policy and providing input and feedback from their communities and sectors.
This was the first issue of contention as we believed that the CSG was not representative of the various communities and sectors and in fact it was a group that had been unilaterally appointed by the WRC and in actual fact many of the members of the CSG were appointed on the basis that they were representative of particular industry groups, (e.g. Fonterra; Beef & Lamb; Dairy NZ; Hort NZ; Federated Farmers etc.)
https://www.plug4growth.co.nz/healthy-rivers-stakeholders-24-june-2018/
It was felt by many that these representatives were agreeing with the position of their industry groups but that they were not in fact actually supported by a large number of those groups, memberships.
P.L.U.G. was formed as a cross-sector group of rural stakeholders who all felt that they had been dis-enfranchised by this method of selecting the representatives on the CSG.
The Collaborative Stakeholder Group worked closely with a Technical Advisory Group who provided technical information to them and the project steering group. They collated, analysed, summarised and presented environmental, social, cultural and economic information about the rivers and the consequences of different land management scenarios.
Most of the information that the CSG produced was based on the computer modelling of river that was carried out to identify what the situation was in terms of water quality in 1863.
This computer modelling was another huge area of debate with many of those opposed to PC1 believing that the modelling was wrong and presented an untrue idea of the quality of the rivers at that time in history.
Overseer
The Primary Land Users Group (P.L.U.G.) had identified problems with using Overseer as a regulatory instrument as far back as 2016 and in a press release dated 29th January 2017 in relation to Waikato Regional Council’s, Healthy Rivers Plan Change 1, made the following point in relation to Overseer:
[Overseer is notoriously inaccurate with a very wide margin for error and was never designed for use as a regulatory tool. It is used in other areas but only as an advisory tool to indicate possible levels of discharge.]
In August this year an independent panel in charge of a long-awaited review into Overseer, one of the country’s main farm pollution management tools, concluded it could not be confident in Overseer’s ability to estimate nitrogen loss from farms.
The scientific panel cited “overarching structural problems” with the tool, which has been used to help manage water quality in some of New Zealand’s most troubled catchments.
Despite the WRC knowing that Overseer was never designed to be used as a regulatory tool, council included in PC1, regulatory requirements based on the use of Overseer.
The findings of this independent panel have vindicated P.L.U.G. and others stance, that Overseer was not fit for purpose as set out in PC1.
https://www.plug4growth.co.nz/overseer-review/
Whilst the vindication is good it just further emphasises the waste of money spent by all parties in either fighting for or against the entrenched views of the regulatory staff throughout the PC1 process.
Submissions and hearings Process
During the public consultation process there were over two thousand submissions lodged with WRC and the vast majority of those submissions opposed PC1 in some form.
At the end of the consultation period a hearings panel of independent commissioners was appointed to listen to oral submissions in support of the written submissions on PC1.
At the end of the hearings processes the independent panel of commissioners reported back to WRC with recommendations for changes to the basic Plan Change document and their report was made public.
Submitters then had the opportunity to file an appeal in the Environment court, against the commissioner’s findings and some did so.
Up to this point in the process the WRC had spent in excess of thirty million dollars on PC1 and it could rightly be assumed that submitters had spent at least an equivalent amount on preparing and delivering their submissions.
Once the appeals had been lodged with the Environment Court a date was set for hearing of these appeals. During the time from the setting of the date for the appeal hearings and the present date, the Central Government has re-written the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater and as part of this process they have recommended more changes that are in line with some of the issues raised by PLUG and others as part of the public consultation process, which had been rejected by the WRC.
Current Situation
The WRC has just recently approached the appellants to the Environment Court in relation to PC1 to ask if they would agree to WRC withdrawing PC1, in a large part due to the changes made by government, to the NES for Freshwater.
The appellants in the main refused to agree to this action as they wanted to achieve a definitive ruling from the court on the issues within PC1, that they believed were not fit for purpose and to set a reference point for the future in relation to these issues.
Summary
So here we are in December 2021 looking back at the whole process of PC1 and all we can see is a huge waste of money.
We are very close to the appeals being heard in the Environment Court and we see the WRC are trying desperately to refrain from having to appear in the Environment Court and the appellants are doing their best to get their day in front of the court to ensure their opportunity to achieve a definitive ruling from the court on the issues within PC1, that they believed were not fit for purpose and to set a reference point for the future in relation to these issues.
Overall this is a process that has been undertaken based on one person’s decision to resile from their commitment to maintain the status quo (Paula Southgate).
The decision to notify PC1 has resulted in costs across WRC and all stakeholders of way in excess of fifty million dollars and here we are five years down the track, with the WRC trying to withdraw the plan change from the Environment Court process turning all that spending to waste.
Who will be held accountable for this waste?
Andy Loader