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National environmental standard for sources of human drinking water

Draft Users’ Guide now available

The "Draft Users’ Guide: National Environmental Standard for Sources of Human Drinking Water" is now available. Comments on any aspect of the guide to improve its usefulness are welcome. Feedback can be made until 1 September 2009 by emailing standards@mfe.govt.nz

The National Environmental Standard for Sources of Human Drinking Water is intended to reduce the risk of contaminating drinking water sources such as rivers and groundwater. It does this by requiring regional councils to consider the effects of activities on drinking water sources in their decision making.

The standard is a regulation under the Resource Management Act (RMA) 1991. It came into effect on 20 June 2008. It requires regional councils to ensure that effects on drinking water sources are considered in decisions on resource consents and regional plans. Specifically, councils are required to:

  • decline discharge or water permits that are likely to result in community drinking water becoming unsafe for human consumption following existing treatment
  • be satisfied that permitted activities in regional plans will not result in community drinking water supplies being unsafe for human consumption following existing treatment
  • place conditions on relevant resource consents requiring notification of drinking water suppliers if significant unintended events occur (e.g. spills) that may adversely affect sources of human drinking water.

Supporting material

A draft plain English guide to the regulation is now available. Users are welcome to provide feedback and offer suggestions about parts of the guide where changes or additional information would be useful.

If your question is not covered here, please feel free to ask us directly by emailing standards@mfe.govt.nz

Further information

Background

The standard was gazetted in December 2007 and there was a six month phase-in of the standard to give councils, water suppliers and consent applicants time to become familiar with its requirements. During this time the Ministry ran workshops nationwide to explain the requirements of the standard.

The development of the national environmental standard is documented in the following material.

Cabinet paper

Cabinet approval to draft the regulation was obtained in 2006. For detail on the policy background for the national environmental standard, refer to the Cabinet Paper: Proposed National Environmental Standard for Sources of Human Drinking Water.

The 2006 Cabinet paper was accompanied by a regulatory impact statement, which is a short document setting out the costs and benefits of the policy: Regulatory impact statement: National environmental standard for sources of human drinking water.

Section 32 report

The section 32 report evaluated the efficiency, effectiveness and appropriateness of the national environmental standard. This is a requirement under the Resource Management Act 1991 when developing a regulation, including a national environmental standard.

The report also includes a response to public submissions.

Consultation on the national environmental standard

The national environmental standard was developed in close consultation with local government and the Ministry of Health, including an eight week public submission period. Submissions closed on 28 November 2005.

Several key changes to the standard were made based on consideration of submissions. These included:

  • applying the consent component of the standard to water and discharge permits only
  • assigning regional councils (not territorial authorities) the primary responsibility for implementing the majority of the standard (reflecting existing responsibilities and expertise in water quality)
  • increasing the community water supply population threshold for application of the standard from 25 to 500 people, to reduce implementation costs.

A report on submissions was published in February 2006.

Last updated: 9 February 2009