ECan provides no eleventh hour fix

Nothing beats a roaring fire to help one forget about the rain outside. And nothing beats a roaring fire to remind one of the perils of poorly communicated policy.

Many householders now wonder how much longer they have to stoke their wood burners to beat the winter cold. That should be easy to answer: if they use a burner that’s 15 years or older, they have until October 31 to apply for consent to replace it. And if they use their old burner next winter, they will run foul of Canterbury Air Regional Plan.

The thing is, it is obvious too few people understand the implications of the plan. Many others are angry and scared. Too few have applied for consent to replace their burners: some 4000 burners may be affected, but there have not been some 4000 applications. At the same time, the ECan-adminstered fund to help people pay for a cleaner replacement remains woefully under-subscribed. It’s been boosted by $100,000 but the boost is not in response to sustained demand. And frankly, it should be.

Timaru and Waimate householders, in particular, should have been made well aware of this before now. They should not have been expected to pay close attention to the development of the rule: ECan needed to be more proactive than that.

Certainly, there many clues to this in submissions to the proposed plan. The Waimate District Council urged ECan to extend the deadline, to give householders time to save and fix. It called the timetable ‘‘unrealistic’’ and urged education.

The Timaru District Council supported subsidies for the most vulnerable and — perhaps crucially — supported ECan’s proposal to employ appropriate resources in Timaru.

The current mess, in which confusion and concern abounds, strongly suggests ECan underestimated — or underprepared for — the change. If it had planned appropriately, it may not have needed a pop-up shop to explain the deadline four months before it falls due. It might not have needed to answer to a just-formed residents’ group concerned the rule developed two years ago is ultra vires and unfair.

And, it certainly would not have had to change the nature of the deadline. The rule says householders must have a building consent before October 31 if they want to replace their old burner with a low emission one. ECan now says it’s okay to have lodged an application.

The air plan rules had effect from February 28, 2015, when the plan was publicly notified. That so much — or so little — has happened at the eleventh-hour suggests ECan has failed in its responsibility to the ratepayers its clean air plan purports to protect.