Agenda of Hawke's Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee

Meeting of the Hawke's Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee

Date: Wednesday 7 November 2018

Time: 10.00 am

Venue:

Council Chamber

Hawke's Bay Regional Council

159 Dalton Street

NAPIER

Agenda

Item Subject Page

1. Welcome/Notices/Apologies and Call for Minor Items not on the Agenda

2. Conflict of Interest Declarations

3. Confirmation of Minutes of the Hawke's Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee held on 15 August 2018

Information or Performance Monitoring

4. Follow-up on CHB Private Drinking Water Supply Issues 3

5. Update on HBRC TANK Plan Change Potential Drinking Water Safety Provisions 5

6. Joint Working Group Activities Update 7

7. Discussion of Minor Items not on the Agenda

Hawke's Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee

Wednesday 07 November 2018

Subject: Follow-up on CHB Private Drinking Water Supply Issues

Reason for Report

1. To provide an overview of activities being carried out to address concerns raised by the Central Hawke’s Bay community in relation to private drinking water supplies.

Background

2. At the Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting of 15 August 2018 the representative from Central Hawkes Bay provided an overview of drinking water supply shortages for residents in the Ongaonga and Tikokino communities of Central Hawke’s Bay District Council (the Council).

3. Both communities are small with less than 100 households each, and have a strong agricultural focus. Neither community is connected to the drinking or wastewater reticulated services provided by the Council. Accordingly, dwellings in both communities provide for their own drinking water through privately owned shallow bores (most shallower than 30 metres) or rain water collection systems.

4. In 2016, residents of both communities reported that private bores were running dry in summer months. Residents of both communities provided anecdotal evidence at the time of direct relationships between their bores performance and nearby irrigation with several reported incidents of pressure drops or total loss of private supply when nearby irrigators came online. More residents took action to lower their bores or install submersible pumps to mitigate the loss of supply with variable results.

5. In July 2018, the residents presented a petition to HRBC seeking a reduction in the allowable take of irrigators in the Ruataniwha basin and a cessation to the additional takes to be permitted under tranche 2. In response, both HBRC and the Council have suggested a coordinated response to addressing the problems.

The Tukituki Catchment Taskforce

6. At the August 2018 meeting the representative for CHB tabled the item for consideration of the JWG, who in turn agreed that the matter fell within the Terms of Reference and the intent of the Group.

7. In parallel, HBRC senior leadership and science staff presented to the Council’s Elected Members about some of the issues in the Tukituki catchment. An outcome of this meeting was an agreement reached between HBRC and the Council that HBRC would lead the formation of a taskforce to address the issues of water quantity and security in the Tukituki catchment.

8. The Tukituki Catchment Taskforce (the Taskforce) consists of a diverse membership of approximately twenty-five participants including HBRC, the Council, private bore owners, commercial growers, industry reps, tangata whenua, DOC, Forest & Bird and Fish & Game. It has its own Terms of Reference.

9. The Taskforce is focused on quantity issues in the catchment. It has met twice and has agreed on indicative issues to focus on regarding ground and surface water quantity having effect on drinking water supplies, irrigation volume security and river flow volumes. For example, a survey is to be distributed to residents of Ongaonga and Tikokino which seeks information on bores including their age, capacity, depth and location.

10. Given the work programme of the Taskforce it is considered that the JWG may not need to duplicate efforts via its own work programme. However, the JWG and the Taskforce will remain connected through shared membership and will share information where necessary.

Decision Making Process

11. Staff have assessed the requirements of the Local Government Act 2002 in relation to this item and have concluded that, as this report is for information only, the decision making provisions do not apply.

Recommendation

That the Hawke’s Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee receives and notes the “Follow-up on CHB Private Drinking Water Supply Issues” staff report.

Authored by:

Rina Douglas

Senior Planner

Dr Jeff Smith

Team Leader/Principal Scientist – Hydrology/Hydrogeology

Approved by:

Liz Lambert

Group Manager
Regulation

Iain Maxwell

Group Manager
Integrated Catchment Management

Attachment/s

There are no attachments for this report.

Hawke's Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee

Wednesday 07 November 2018

Subject: Update on HBRC TANK Plan Change Potential Drinking Water Safety Provisions

Reason for Report

1. To provide an update on the development of potential provisions relating to drinking water safety for inclusion in the Regional Council’s TANK (Greater Heretaunga) Plan change.

Background

2. To recap, the Joint Working Group (JWG) presented the following recommendations to the TANK group meeting on 27 July 2018.

2.1. Include a new objective to provide an explicit statement in the Regional Plan that recognises and provides for drinking water source protection zones (SPZs)

2.2. Include a new policy to support the above objective and provide guidance as to how the objective is to be implemented.

2.3. Several changes to rules:

2.3.1. For activities that already require a resource consent, add matters of control/ discretion that enable the risk to drinking water sources to be considered, where those activities are located in mapped SPZs

2.3.2. Introduce consenting requirements for activities located over SPZs

2.3.3. A default 2km radius or provisional protection zone (PPZ) applied for registered drinking water supplies in the absence of more specific information

2.3.4. Amendments to some existing Permitted Activity rules to meet National Environmental Standard for Sources of Human Drinking Water requirements

2.3.5. Production Land use consents in a SPZ area to be a permitted activity as proposed by TANK, but Farm Environment Plans will need to include consultation with the water supply authority and identify measures to manage risks to drinking water sources

3. The TANK group supported the recommendations subject to some technical refinement between the JWG, the TANK project team and GEM. These refinements were discussed at the 24 August 2018 JWG meeting and were incorporated into Draft TANK plan change Version 7.

Presentation to RPC 31 October 2018

4. Draft TANK plan change Version 7 was presented to the RPC at its 31 October meeting. This included a summary of the options presented by JWG to TANK, and the process undertaken by Hastings District Council to finalise SPZ maps for its urban drinking water supplies. It also outlined the types of activities that had been considered in terms of their risk posed. Feedback was sought by RPC on this approach.

5. The RPC was broadly comfortable with the draft package, however, it did seek some clarification around several minor details, such as:

5.1. The practical implications of the SPZs and PPZs on land use implications both current and future, in those zones.

5.2. The status of the development of Napier City Council’s SPZs

5.3. The cost allocations for investigating SPZ zones.

6. The JWG is working through the feedback provided at RPC. Additionally, work is being done to finalise remaining outstanding matters relating to the draft package, including the spatial definition of default protection areas.

Decision Making Process

7. Staff have assessed the requirements of the Local Government Act 2002 in relation to this item and have concluded that, as this report is for information only, the decision making provisions do not apply.

Recommendation

That the Hawke’s Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee receives and notes the “Update on HBRC TANK Plan Change Potential Drinking Water Safety Provisions” staff report.

Authored by:

Rina Douglas

Senior Planner

Malcolm Miller

Manager Consents

Approved by:

Tom Skerman

Group Manager
Strategic Planning

Liz Lambert

Group Manager
Regulation

Attachment/s

There are no attachments for this report.

HAWKE’S BAY REGIONAL COUNCIL

Hawke's Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee

Wednesday 07 November 2018

Subject: Joint Working Group Activities Update

Reason for Report

1. To provide an update on the Joint Working Group’s (JWG) work plan activities.

Background

2. The JWG continue to progress the actions in its workplan. The following are priority actions:

2.1. Further refinement of recommendations to the TANK plan change in terms of rules and policies. The draft package was presented to RPC at its 31 October meeting.

2.2. A planned Comms workshop (date TBC). This was initially scheduled for Tuesday 25 September, but due to low numbers was postponed.

2.3. Further refinement of the Arsenic Information Sharing Protocol based on recent experience.

2.4. Enhanced focus on Water Safety Plans (WSP) with each council to present its WSP to the JWG for discussion. Napier presented at the 1 November 2018 meeting, with Central Hawke’s Bay to present at the next meeting.

Decision Making Process

3. Staff have assessed the requirements of the Local Government Act 2002 in relation to this item and have concluded that, as this report is for information only, the decision making provisions do not apply.

Recommendation

That the Hawke’s Bay Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee receives and notes the “Joint Working Group Activities Update” staff report.

Authored by:

Rina Douglas

Senior Planner

Malcolm Miller

Manager Consents

Approved by:

Tom Skerman

Group Manager Strategic Planning

Liz Lambert

Group Manager Regulation

Attachment/s

⇩1

1 November 2018 Joint Working Group Work Plan