Two quit air plan group
In a surprise move, the head of the residents’ committee set up to challenge Timaru’s controversial woodburner replacement rule has resigned, along with the group secretary.
Mark Rogers, who set up the South Canterbury Regional Air Plan Liaison Committee this year, is stepping down as chairman and leaving the committee.
Tom O’Connor, national president of Grey Power, has also resigned from his position as secretary.
The committee was set up to combat Environment Canterbury’s rule that all woodburners 15-years-old and older needed to be replaced.
Rogers referred all future enquiries to committee member Doug Cleveland.
When contacted Cleveland said he was unaware of Rogers’ decision, and declined to comment until the committee had met.
Rogers said he made the decision because O’Connor was now focusing on the rule more from a national angle, and he believed that would be more effective.
‘‘We’ve made a fair bit of progress over the time we’ve been operating,’’ Rogers said.
‘‘I’ve contributed as much as I can now.’’
The community had made an ‘‘amazing’’ contribution to holding the regional council to account, he said.
Getting clarification people could add electrostatic devices to their fires was something Rogers said he was proud of, along with getting ECan’s smoke spotters ‘‘called off’’ - however ECan air quality director Katherine Trought said earlier this year the smoke spotting programme was only intended to last eight weeks.
O’Connor confirmed he would still be working on the issue, but said he was trying to get the National Environmental Standards changed rather than the Canterbury Regional Air Plan.
Initially he had approached the woodburner issue as a local problem, but found communities all around the country were facing the same issues. ’’It’s not unique to here, though it’s probably as bad here as anywhere.
‘‘Grey Power have to take on,’’ he said.
Environment Minister Nick Smith spoke to a public meeting attended by about 85 people in Timaru on September 19.
Smith told the meeting he wanted a standardised approach across all councils, so regional councils could no longer set their own rules for woodburner replacement.
If the National Party returned to power, he would propose the idea during the review of the National Environmental Standards for Air Quality.
O’Connor said he was meeting officials from the Ministry for the Environment next week to discuss the topic.
‘‘If we can get the national standards to change, the regional standards won’t be so draconian.
‘‘Locally we’ve taken it about as far as we can take it.’’
He had spoken to the committee and told them of his decision to resign, he said.
Cleveland called the first public meeting on the woodburner issue, and the community owed him a debt of gratitude, O’Connor said.
The Canterbury Air Regional Plan says burners aged 15 years or older cannot be used. People have until October 31 to apply for building consent to replace them with a low emission burner. it