Environment committee meets

The environment committee’s first agenda tomorrow is GWRC’s strategic priorities framework, and also the regional biodiversity framework.

I can’t wait for tomorrow. I’ll be chairing my first Wellington Regional Council environment committee.

I’m hugely honoured to be chair of the committee this term, and given the colleagues around the council table now, and supported by a committed staff, we recognise that the regional council has a huge role to play in protecting and restoring our environment.

Certainly this term in office will be the opportunity make progress on environmental issues in our region, and I have a sense that the people elected around the GWRC table are equally committed to make progress.

Just prior to the election last October GWRC made the big decision to declare a climate emergency, and also set progressive targets for our organisation to achieve carbon neutrality. Those two key decisions were backed up by action plans. Now we get on with the action part.

The environment committee’s first agenda tomorrow is GWRC’s strategic priorities framework, and also the regional biodiversity framework. I’ll cover those off a bit more in next week’s column, but the third item I’ve added to my agenda is an oral update from officers on the numerous discharges that have kept coming over the summer out of the Wellington City Council’s wastewater network.

Regional council has a number of roles in this issue, primarily as the consenting environmental council, and then, as other councils and businesses can attest to, when pollutants are contained and dealt with in the consented ways we become the regulatory organisation that can even take them to court.

While we have been closely monitoring the polluting events over summer tomorrow will be an opportunity to understand the breadth of problems, and our role.