Report is wrong, we need ECan

[A lunchtime ral­ly to demand Can­ter­bury’s right to man­age Can­ter­bury’s water is to take place on Monday, 22 March. Meetup in Victoria Square at 12.15pm.

Ruth Dyson, our Port Hills MP, will be attending. Bring a placard with the name of your favourite river or lake that may be under threat. It's sure to be an interesting event, as cows may be there too!]

Sacking councilors would deny the Port Hills and 500,000 Canterbury citizens their elected voice in water management. It would contravene a basic democratic principle of “no taxation without representation”. And there is no public mandate to sever water management from the regional council’s other statutory functions.  

The Creech Report is based on a three week review in November 2009, interviews with less than 20 stakeholders, local authority Mayors and CEOs, and staff of Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu rather than any broad based public consultation similar to that undertaken by the Royal Commission into Auckland governance.

The Creech Review group did not establish any statutory basis for its recommendation to dismiss elected councillors nor find any dysfunction in governance which would justify the removal of Councillors’ functions, powers and duties in relation to water. It said “Our investigation did not bear this out”. Similarly the “Water” recommendations in the first part of the Creech Report to establish a stand-alone Water Authority are not well supported by analysis and evidence in the body of the report.

Substantial progress is being made with regional plans and policies - decisions on the water chapters of the Natural Resources Regional Plan are due to be released in August, a second generation Regional Policy Statement is due to be notified in September, and reviews of environmental flows are underway (eg Waimakariri  and Waipara ). Implementation of the innovative Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) is proceeding apace.

Environment Canterbury has provided much of the staff expertise, governance oversight and co-ordination to develop and now implement the CWMS. The CWMS is based on an established set of relationships with the regional council as moderator. Curtailment of the regional council’s role risks destabilising the CWMS.

Resource consent processing times have improved substantially since the out of date 2007/08 Ministry for the Environment survey. Using a rolling average over the last 12 months, close to 90% of consent applications are now processed in accordance with RMA time frames. There are plenty of good news stories in water management.

The review of 600 consents in the Rakaia-Selwyn groundwater zone has resulted in annual allocation limits on takes, water meters, and restrictions on groundwater takes connected to lowland streams to help restore stream flows. This has been done through a collaborative process involving “cluster groups” of consent holders. Commissioners have endorsed the agreed approach.

The Creech Report would not acknowledge the complexity of water management in the region.  For example the volume of water sought by consent applicants in Canterbury in three months is equivalent to the total volume of water allocated in Taranaki in the history of that region. Canterbury has set environmental flow regimes for about 250 rivers and tributaries in the river. Otago has set 12 environmental flow regimes.

There is no evidence to support the Creech Report’s assertion that Environment Canterbury has impeded economic growth in the region. The National Bank’s analysis of regional economic activity shows that from March 2001-August 2009 the average annual growth rate in Canterbury for each quarter has generally exceeded the national growth in economic activity.

Appointing commissioners risks a perception that they will promote economic development and the interests of agribusiness and irrigation ahead of sustainable management. As the Prime Minister noted in his opening speech to Parliament, “the Government will take action this year to remove regulatory roadblocks to water storage and irrigation in Canterbury”. Portraying Environment Canterbury as such an obstacle destabilises its regulatory role and ignores the Council’s statutory responsibilities for managing water quality and quantity.

If commissioners are tasked with promoting economic growth and irrigation development ahead of environmental wellbeing this may generate a short term growth bubble.  An agency with a compromised regulatory role potentially burdens future generations with more polluted waterways and increased nitrate levels in groundwater.