Review hangs over One Plan

Officials in charge of sorting out environmental management rules in Manawatu¯ are moving forward with change, while keeping an eye at a Governmentinitiated review looming in the distance.

The One Plan, Horizons’ resource management rulebook, has been the subject of various court cases during the past decade. As a result, the council has to make changes to it to ensure currently unconsented land users – mainly dairy farmers in Tararua and vegetable growers in Horowhenua – have the ability to at least apply for a consent.

Councillors were given a brief update on One Plan changes at a strategy and policy committee meeting yesterday.

The update was part of an omnibus of items related to the Resource Management Act, which the plan relates to.

Council policy and strategy manager Rebecca Taylor said there were multiple plan changes coming up in the next eight years.

Those changes included adapting to updates to nitrogen leaching software Overseer, aligning the plan to national freshwater policy, and making the plan read similarly to the environmental rules of other regional councils.

But the calendar was subject to change, as the Government had announced a review of the Resource Management Act and signalled other policy changes, Taylor said. ‘‘We are starting to see the avalanche come through.’’

The Resource Management Act consultation happening between this month and October, the same time most councillors would be focused on local body elections, did not help either, she said.

Strategy and regulation group manager Nic Peet said recent court cases also had an influence, with one in Rotorua indicating the Environment Court was assessing how nutrient leaching into waterways was allocated in different ways.

Cr John Barrow said he was concerned at some of the indicated changes, including being able to review the effects of multiple consents on a waterway, then using that information to create new leaching limits.

Peet said there was potential for those reviews to happen to individuals already.

Cr David Cotton said he had seen environmental groups wanted to take the One Plan either straight to the Environment Court or to a board of inquiry. Peet said only the council or Environment Minister David Parker could make that happen, and neither had expressed a desire to.