1 Introduction

1.1 Background

Over the past few years there has been an increasing call from many people in business, local government and the wider community for the Ministry for the Environment to develop national environmental standards. This call was repeated at a series of breakfast meetings the Ministry for the Environment hosted in mid-2002, where there was support in principle for the introduction of standards to provide national consistency and a minimum level of protection for the community.

The Ministry for the Environment then worked closely with regional councils to agree on priorities for national environmental standards. In August 2003, the Government gave the Ministry for the Environment approval to consult on the first suite of national environmental standards. Consequently, in October 2003 the Minister for the Environment proposed a range of national environmental standards. These included a suite of proposed air quality standards, as well as a proposal to require the capture and destruction of landfill gas at landfills over a million tonnes in capacity.

Public notices informing people of the submission period were placed in major papers on 25 October 2003. The notices informed people of:

the subject matter of the proposed national environmental standards
the Minister's reasons for considering that the proposals are consistent with the purposes of the Resource Management Act 1991
how people could make a submission
the deadline for submissions.

A copy of the public notice is included in Appendix A of this report.

During November 2003 the Ministry for the Environment undertook a comprehensive road show across New Zealand, holding over 30 meetings in 16 regions and talking to over 1000 people. Implementation of the proposed national environmental standards was one of the key topics discussed at the road show meetings. Once again there was support in principle for the development of national environmental standards.

The deadline for submissions was 5 pm on Friday 5 December 2003. Due to concerns expressed by some parties over the short timeframe for comment, submissions were accepted until midday 24 December 2003.

An outline of the proposed standard was published on the Ministry for the Environment's website in a summary fact sheet titled Proposed Landfill Gas Collection and Destruction Standard, dated October 2003. The fact sheet is attached as Appendix C of this report.

A suite of proposed national environmental standards covering air quality issues was notified in parallel.

1.2 Purpose of this document

This document presents an overview of the submissions received on the proposed national environmental standards for landfill gas. It is intended to provide a concise summary of the views expressed. It is not intended to provide analysis of those views or recommendations in response to the submissions. This will be done in a separate report, which will be presented to Cabinet later this year.

The summary of submissions received on the proposed air quality standards is included in a separate document available from www.mfe.govt.nz.

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