Gisborne local government meeting
Monday 6 November
Waste policy
Recycling, reuse and community
- Recycling contractors are facing some challenges.
- How much more should be invested in recycling?
- There is concern that the costs of recycling still fall on local government.
- Recycling is too expensive for low population areas.
- Gisborne is performing well at recycling.
- A decision was taken to incentivise a commercial market for recycling.
- Finding local uses for recycled materials is challenging yet important.
- Gisborne ran a promotion with The Ark to collect used and unwanted PCs and noticed the age of equipment.
Product stewardship
- Some scepticism was expressed about voluntary approaches.
- There is concern that the cost of product stewardship schemes will fall on local government.
- Tyres are a particular issue (dumping, lack of tracking).
- There is limited interest in tyre track. Nobody is interested in voluntary schemes.
- Used oil and tyres are a high priority for regulation.
Waste levy
- Perhaps money from a levy on waste going to landfills could be directed to those populations/regions (e.g. Gisborne) with limited local options and high challenges.
- The money from a waste levy should be redirected locally (ring fenced) – not just returned from whence it came, but returned with a thoughtful basis.
- Gisborne has already invested a lot. It might lose out proportionally because it has already done so much.
- The disincentive effect is also important (although it then needs to be higher).
Landfills
- Capturing clean fill data is a real problem. It is hard to even know about clean fills sometimes.
- Would the government look at “super-landfills” as a way of managing waste i.e. large, regional, well managed landfills (approx 6-10 nationwide), with some form of public involvement as a safeguard. There was a request that central government look at getting more involved in this area.
- Private landfills are a challenge.
- The main driver for Gisborne looking at landfill control is control of waste stream
General comments
- Concern was expressed about regional areas missing out on action and attention because the greatest proportional gains can be made in large centres.
- Where is MfE at in helping to establish “beneficial uses” for biosolids, organics etc?
- The Waste Strategy review needs to look at defining “beneficial use” and look at total waste, as opposed to just waste to landfill.
National Environmental Standards
Water
- An NES on water allocation should be considered.
Infrastructure
- It is difficult to monitor radio frequency in-line with guidelines. It is not easy to determine the source of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) through monitoring.
- Setback of telecommunications facilities from specific activities would be useful.
- Guidelines on integrated monitoring of regional policy statements (RPS), the state of the environment, and plan effectiveness would be useful.
Land transport noise
- Has any progress been made following on from discussions in 2005 about developing standards for noise?
- There were initial discussions on land transport noise, but no progress has been made.
- There is concern about noise from logging trucks. Standards for land transport noise would be useful especially for urban setting e.g. indoor noise standards and links to insulation requirements.
- There are links between road surfacing and land transport noise.
General comments
- RMA training is needed for non-planners, particularly in the resource consent and urban planning areas. A co-ordinated training programme should be run, supported by local government.
Water
Water allocation and usage
- Gisborne already requires water metering. Concern was expressed about putting water meters in the right place.
- There are low allocation problems. Vineyards do not require irrigation. The mix of crops at the moment does not require too much water.
- K-Line irrigation might be on the rise.
- There is a lack of ecological research on rivers. This creates problems because the council cannot afford to undertake research in terms of environmental flows.
- Gisborne does not have an allocation plan but a limit is put in consents. A framework is already in place for allocating water.
- The crops grown in the region are not water intensive. Local government does not want to have implement frameworks when the system is already working well.
- There are only three dairy farms in the area.
- There is no irrigation on farms and no nitrate issues because of the soil types in the region.
- The Council wants to know more specifics about the options being worked up on environmental flows.
- Information on water bodies is important for making decisions on consents.
- The combined regional and district plan is not yet operative so it would take a long time and a lot of resources to develop a water component.
General comments
- There is potential for erosion, which will affect rivers.
- Because of erosion, it is not realistic to have all rivers in a pristine condition to meet a standard across New Zealand.
- A rule was proposed requiring to trees to be planted.
- The East Coast Forestry Project was established to address soil erosion in the Gisborne region.
- Land owners are quite agreeable but acceptance is not great.
- Policy is pushing the planting of pine. The project does not limit people to planting pines.
- Credible policy around forest sinks is wanted.
- There is some foreign interest in purchasing carbon sinks, however there seems to be a lack of information about how this works.
- There are concerns about the liability associated with taking carbon sinks.
- What might be the role of local authorities? Incentives and clear and consistent messages are needed for the credit system to work.
- An excess of shingle in waterways fills riverbeds and causes drainage problems. The excess started from natural causes and is creating problems for communities. It is costly to remove the shingle.
- There is not a lot of coast development yet. A septic tank standard is not supported.
- Reticulation of the Wairua Community is budgeted for 2007/2008.
Climate change
General comments
- Central government needs to show more leadership on climate change.
- There is concern about climate change and flood risk. Floods have cost the region a huge amount.
- There is concern about the use of trees as a carbon sink. They are only a “sink” for so long until they mature – foresight is needed regarding this.
- Policies should exist for products used in new buildings. Information should be readily available.
- Government needs to get involved to help locals take practical actions to adapt.
- Price-based measures for climate change – change in behaviour is the only way to get buy-in
- A contestable fund is needed for research into climate change.
- The focus should be on adaptation, not mitigation.
- Emission control practices need to be managed on a national level.
Education and information
- Information and climate change models are needed.
- Public awareness is required for practical aspects of the Stern report.
- Local climate change adaptation documents are a good idea for councils.
- The NIWA climate change documents are too big picture and not practical.
Environmental reporting
General comments
- Small councils face resource issues regarding monitoring costs for the proposed core indicators.
- If the information is already being collected that is fine, otherwise central government should pay. Indicators that are not required by smaller councils should also be paid for by central government.
- Being able to break down the information on the indicators to a regional level is crucial. This will help to convince people that there is a problem in a particular area.
- The scale of LENZ does not offer enough detail to make it useable.
- REC does not prioritise rivers in Gisborne.
- There were concerns over the compatibility of GIS. There are two systems and each references data in different ways.
- Each region needs access to any national database that is established.
- Who interprets the trends that the key indicators show? Different perspectives will present it in different ways.
- Will MfE be producing a framework/guide on producing state of the environment reports?
- What is MfE going to do about national reporting on the efficiency and effectiveness of Regional Policy Statements?
- Development of the Cultural Heath Index (CHI) as a core indicator may encourage councils to utilised the CHI.
- Why does MfE not get involved at a local level in the Long Term Council Community Plans? (LTCCPs)? They need to be driven from a national level.
Last updated: 27 February 2008
