MEP hearings about to start

Hearings for the Marlborough Environment Plan will start this month.

Submissions are set to be heard in two blocks, with the first in November and the second in February.

The hearing panel for the proposed plan has seven members, including four councillors and three independent commissioners.

The panel will be chaired by Sounds councillor Trevor Hook.

Remaining members of the panel are councillors Jamie Arbuckle, David Oddie, Laressa Shenfield and independent commissioners Ron Crosby, Rawiri Faulkner and Shonagh Kenderdine.

The first week of hearings start on November 20 and cover provisions of the plan that relate to iwi. They will be held at the Omaka Marae.

The following week, starting November 27, the hearings will focus on provisions that relate to Marlborough’s natural and physical resources and will be held at the Marlborough District Council.

The second block of hearings, also scheduled for two weeks, are set to start on February 12, focusing on provisions relating to climate change, energy indigenous biodiversity and natural character and landscape.

A council spokesperson said other topics would be heard through to July 2018.

The panel would have the task of hearing more than 1300 separate submissions made on the proposed Marlborough Environment Plan.

The plan defined what activities were appropriate in the urban, rural and coastal environments.

The 1200-page plan brought together three existing council plans, and covered agriculture and forestry.

It brought the Wairau/Awatere and Marlborough Sounds resource management plans, and the Marlborough Regional Policy Statement into one document.

‘‘The MEP [Marlborough Environment Plan] effectively consolidates all the council’s existing resource management documents into a single plan which becomes the district’s guide for future growth and development,’’ Hook said.

‘‘At the same time, setting out how the region’s natural and physical resources should be managed and protected.’’

Council environmental policy regulatory manager Pere Hawes said there would not be an aquaculture chapter in the hearings.

‘‘The working group working on it since March are still meeting over it,’’ Hawes said.

The chapter was taken out of the plan after Kaiko¯ura MP Stuart Smith and community leaders raised concerns about a perceived lack of consultation between the industry and the council.

In the aquaculture chapter, the Marlborough Sounds would be considered on a ‘‘bay-by-bay’’ basis by the working group.

The environment plan was released to the public in June last year following a decade of research.

The proposed Marlborough Environment Plan is available to download from the Marlborough District Council website.