Healthy Rivers plan hits rough waters

Final submission dates for part of the Waikato Healthy River Plan Change loom on March 8.

Horticulture NZ chief executive Mike Chapman told Rural News, last week, that with no agreement with the council, the grower lobby now had to consider an injunction because they were “backed into a corner”.

Six primary industry organisations sought a judicial review late last year in the hope of getting an agreement, but Chapman says they now needed to up the ante to an injunction.

The organisations are Horticulture NZ, Federated Farmers, Pukekohe Vegetable Growers Association, Waikato and Waipa branches of the NZ Deer Farmers’ Association, Primary Land Users Group and Beef + Lamb NZ.

The Waikato Regional Council withdrew 120,000ha from the plan last November to enable consultation with Hauraki iwi. HortNZ and the other primary industries groups want all submissions put on hold so they can be considered together.

Chapman says the area removed is an iwi boundary that is across catchments, essentially splitting these and making it difficult for stakeholders to put together submissions. He also claims it unnecessarily complicates the process and causes confusion.

“We do not want to have to work through two separate submission processes, and spend a lot of time and money on lawyers and court processes,” Chapman told Rural News.

“We have variously written, emailed, tried to talk to council and councillors, and appeared before council meetings.”

A recent council meeting on delaying the submission was delegated from council to a Healthy Rivers subcommittee due to meet at the time of going to press.

Chapman says they had no guarantees that meeting would even be held, but hoped it did “the right thing” and extend time for submissions so they were concurrent with the others.

However, WRC staff recommend no extension of time.

“It is all pretty simple from our side,” says Chapman. “You’ve got one catchment, therefore you should have one set of submissions, one set of hearings, one set of rules for each catchment.

“That is what the RMA says: that each catchment must be dealt with as integrated body of water.

“What we are saying is ‘hey you are putting us through two sets of submissions, we’ve got no guarantee that the two processes will ever come together and we might end up with a ridiculous thing where for the one catchment you have different sets of rules’.

“Some of our growers have operations in both bits of the catchment, different standards to meet, so what we are suggesting to the council is sensible and practical,” Chapman explains.

“I honestly cannot understand why they haven’t moved the date and put the two things together. They didn’t talk to us, we just learned about it.”

Chapman says because of the submissions on the first lot, due on March 8, they had to expedite court action and are doing that now because “we have run out of time”. “I made personal approaches to both the chair and the chief executive to try and get things moving.”

He says an injunction will cost more than a judicial review, as will doing two sets of submissions.

“It is a bugger’s muddle really. The council should just clear it all up and turn it into one catchment, one set of submissions.”

Waikato Regional Council chief executive Vaughan Payne says extending the period for submissions on the Healthy Rivers Wai Ora Plan Change 1 could be “against the interest of rural sector groups”.

“A decision on the plan change needs to be made within two years of it having been publicly notified last October,” he claims.

“We indicated to Horticulture NZ, before they filed their court application, that we would rather spend our energies working with them to resolve issues than getting tied up in legal battles. But they and the others went ahead anyway.”

Payne stresses that it has been known since September last year that there was a March 8, 2017 deadline for submissions – four times the usual period required under the Resource Management Act.

“The council and river iwi partners have been more than generous on this front. Another extension to the submissions deadline simply leaves us less time to work with submitters to get alignment on common issues and present a united position to the hearings commissioners.”

Meanwhile, it is expected that Hauraki iwi views on the withdrawn north Waikato area will be able to be incorporated into the plan change process by June. The area was withdrawn after Hauraki raised concerns that it hadn’t been consulted properly.