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Mr James Palmer tabled two documents,
being an HBRIC Ltd letter dated 4 May as previously provided to Councillors
on 10 May; and legal advice that the Environmental Defence Society (Gary
Taylor) shared in relation to seeking a declaratory judgement from the
Environment Court on compliance with Plan Change 6 DIN requirements.
Discussions and queries traversed:
·
Matters that HBRIC needs to consider as
consent holder must be kept separate from HBRC considerations as regulator
·
Councillors Hewitt and Beaven responsible for
considering whether conflict of interest issues arise given their roles as
HBRIC Ltd councillor directors
·
Given likelihood of NGOs seeking Environment
Court declaration, HBRC should join other parties in drafting the scope of
the applications. Expectation that costs would lie where they fall, with
parties paying their own costs.
·
Complexities of resource consents and the
challenges and limitations of implementing PC6 are well understood as considered
and raised through Board of Inquiry and appeal processes, with ongoing
discussions continuing since the BoI final decision was released
·
Issue of LUC limits with headroom on-farm while
instream DIN limits are already exceeded, and HBRC’s ability to require
specific management mitigation measures through a FEMP or through resource
consent conditions
·
Council expectation that first landowners are
required to use best management practice and meet LUC requirements, then
monitor to assess whether limits are being achieved or further mitigation
measures required
·
Measures or consent conditions aimed at achieving
instream DIN must be reasonable and practical – scientific evidence of
the direct effect of mitigation – a plan of how to achieve desired
outcomes is laid out through policy
·
Condition precedent for uptake at 50 M m3
suggested by HBRIC Ltd, subsequent to Palairet suggesting, through its
review, that a higher level of comfort would be achieved if CP raised to
48 M m3
·
HBRIC Ltd letter tabled – outlining
recommendations including adding CP for resolution of the Land Swap, extension
of moratorium on RWSS spending, resetting bankable construction contract CP, modelling
effects of larger flushing flows and required HBRC 6% annual returns
·
The 0.8 instream DIN is a nutrient level that
will be taken up by plants, not a toxicity level
·
Phosphorous management is required by RWSS
resource consent conditions, hence not referenced in staff recommendations
·
Transparent expectations for all farmers in
the catchment, and tools available for achieving the environmental outcomes
·
Compliance with resource consent conditions is
Council’s responsibility to assess, enforce and hold the scheme to
account for. RWSS has significant financial risk and reasons to incentivise
compliance by water users. By contrast Council presently has virtually no regulation
over land use or land practice other than requiring FEMPs in the catchment.
RWSS will have stronger levers to manage land use to enforce compliance. Easier
for Council to regulate one well resourced party than hundreds of individual
consent holders.
·
Environmental management ambiguities to be
addressed, partially through seeking Environment Court declaration
·
All farming enterprises over 4ha required to
have an approved FEMP by June 2018
·
Request to extend spending moratorium and also
asking HBRIC to carry out additional work
·
The $170k cost of the review to be capitalised
into Council’s ‘up to $80M’ investment in RWSS
·
Council’s step-in rights over RWSS to
ensure compliance with the resource consent conditions as per the Concession
Deed
The meeting
adjourned at 10.30am and reconvened at 10.45am
HBRIC Ltd presentation by Blair O’Keeffe and Stephen Daysh
discussions/queries traversed:
·
Resource consent conditions provide a
comprehensive environmental management framework for the scheme
·
Declaration from the Environment Court will be
‘interpretation’ of compliance with consent conditions and would
not ‘change’ the RWSS conditions
·
PC6 key objectives to sustainably
manage the use and development of land, the discharge of contaminants
including nutrients, and the taking, using, damming, or diverting of fresh
water in the Tukituki River catchment
·
Board of Inquiry (paragraph 1208) key finding
that RWSS mitigation and off-sets package “provide for
positive environmental outcomes to offset the unavoidable effects for which
there is no feasible mitigation package. … should be viewed together
with management plans and other mitigation requirements imposed by
conditions. The Board views the proposed offsets involving habitat protection
and enhancement, and the control of predators and weed species, as positive
effects that counterbalance the inevitable loss of existing terrestrial
habitat, flora and fauna.”
·
Query whether it is possible to quantify the
mitigation to determine money spent equals x less nitrate leached through
modelling
·
RWSS package roughly 50% mitigation and 50%
offsets. Mitigation defined by Environment Court as “minimising or
making environmental effects less” while off-set is defined as “a direct compensation for a
direct effect”
·
Priority spring-fed streams project is a key
tool for driving positive changes for ecological health and
Macro-invertebrate Community Index (MCI)
·
Comprehensive FEMP process including audit and
review processes, stock exclusion and fencing requirements, ability to
control Nitrogen losses through ‘approved outputs” for each
farm– gives the scheme the ability to ‘turn the water off’
to farms not meeting requirements until they do
·
Consent conditions require RWSS to be
Phosphorous neutral on a sub-catchment basis across all farms it services
·
Periphyton historical issue particularly in
hot, dry summers to be alleviated by RWSS flushing flows and scheme’s
required maintenance of minimum residual outflows
·
Scheme must meet Toxicity limits set with
adaptive management conditions –specifically designed for Tukituki
catchment
·
MCI monitoring
proposed by HBRIC through the BoI process and added
to the RWSS resource consents through a change of conditions. MCI monitoring
of 15 tributary sites within the RWSS consented area for 2 years prior to and
15 years after the supply of water to identify long-term trends in MCI levels
in those sub-catchments.
·
New review condition 30A whereby HBRC as
regulator can amend the conditions and the volumes required to provide
additional mitigation or off-setting as required
·
PC6 requirement that MCI cannot be degraded
– shading, water temperature and sediment key drivers of MCI
·
Mitigation measures can be progressively
implemented or added as required
·
detailed monitoring results of mitigation
measures through five model farms
·
FEMPs for different land uses, and how to
reduce N and P contributions significantly through mitigations were tested
through BoI process
·
RWSS conditions framework developed over 3
years with 3 layers of ongoing water quality monitoring and adaptive
management. Mitigation and offset projects are extensive and targeted, and
flushing flows are unique management opportunity for periphyton control in
summer
·
RWSS has substantial building blocks for
environmental management
·
Re-set construction and add an environmental
management CP
·
HBRIC Board and senior staff worked through
all consent conditions throughout the development and BoI processes and are
well versed in the requirements
·
Challenge to meet the 2018 FEMP requirements
·
More work to be done on environmental management
package and yet suggesting that RWSS spending moratorium be extended up until
the land swap is resolved. HBRIC directors and company need to be meeting
their legal and financial obligations and the capacity for rolling over the foundation
water user agreements
Further discussions covered:
·
suggested amendments of the recommendations
·
review of the existing RWSS environmental
management package - PC6 provides the environmental management requirements
for the Tukituki catchment
·
confirmation of the status of the June 2014
conditions precedent
·
it was agreed that a new set of
recommendations based on discussions be drafted ahead of re-convening this
item after lunch.
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