How to Change the World. Clare Feeney

Plan. Regional Policy Statements do not contain enforceable rules: they overview the resource management issues of the region and set out policies and methods to achieve integrated management of the natural and physical resources of the whole region out to the 12-mile coastal limit. Other plans then give effect to these with rules and other methods. Regional Coastal Plans provide a framework to promote the integrated and sustainable management of the coastal environment, which can stretch from the mountain-top out to the 12-mile limit, depending on the issue in question. They can make enforceable rules, but only for areas below mean high water springs.

      The research already done to make the policy case for better erosion and sediment control meant that, in Auckland, both these instruments contained strong statements about the effects of accelerated erosion on fresh and coastal waters, noting that many of the adverse effects of land use are expressed in the ultimate marine receiving environments. The same is true of the major lakes and aquifers found in other parts of the world.

      The new policy framework enabled the Council to set up robust regulation of erosion and sediment runoff. There are of course many other national, regional, local, Maori and community laws, policies and strategies that also need to be considered.

      Ongoing erosion and sediment control-related policy work the Council has carried out over the years includes:

      

working with the whole development cycle to promote water-sensitive (low impact) urban design and development methods to minimize erosion and sedimentation during the heavy construction phase; runoff of sediment and other pollutants during the small site development phase (e.g. building houses); and the need for ongoing water cycle management to protect stream channels and minimise stormwater contamination

      

working through integrated watershed and coastal management plans to ensure that on-site erosion and sediment controls are fully integrated with post-development stormwater quantity and quality management within the context of wider watershed and receiving environment considerations

      

strategic planning input to the various statutory and non-statutory national, regional, and local policies, plans and strategies

      

joint regional environmental planning with central and local government and other regional stakeholders such as Maori, major transportation players, key industry representatives and so on.

      Within this policy framework is a prescriptive framework of regulation and enforcement.

      The new Resource Management Act enabled regional councils to prepare regional plans for a given geographic area and/or on a particular resource management issue. Development had become such an issue for the Auckland Region that the Auckland Regional Plan: Sediment Control34, which defines the regulatory controls on land-disturbing activities, was the first regional plan prepared in Auckland.

      Again, there are many other pieces of legislation and other regional plans that need to be considered, but the summary below focuses on the Act and the Regional Plan. Together these enabled the Council to exert strong regulatory control on land-disturbing activities.

      Under review at the time of writing for inclusion in a Unitary Plan, the Auckland Regional Plan: Sediment Control sets up a regulatory framework that defines:

      

when an environmental authorisation (a ‘resource consent’ under the Resource Management Act) is needed for any land-disturbing activity, by setting out classes of activity ranging from controlled through to restricted-discretionary, and discretionary to non-complying – each one requiring a higher standard of scrutiny in order to obtain approval

      

permitted activities for which formal authorization is not needed, provided various environmental performance standards are met; as well as prohibited activities for which an application cannot even be made (though this option was not provided for in the context of erosion and sediment control)

      

sediment control protection areas, based on environmental risk criteria such as land slope and proximity to water bodies. It also sets up a higher standard of performance if works are done in any area or in relation to any issue raised in other relevant policies or plans.

      The Resource Management Act (also currently under review) provides for resource consent application procedures that enable the Council to require applicants to assess the environmental effects of their land-disturbing activities and to prepare erosion and sediment control plans to avoid, minimize, remedy or mitigate them. It also requires monitoring of compliance by regulators and consent holders (developers and their agents).

      The Act provides a range of enforcement procedures including (from lesser to major) infringement, abatement and enforcement notices; and prosecutions. In New Zealand, prosecutions are a criminal conviction with potentially heavy fines (including for ongoing offences) and up to two years imprisonment.

       Surprise!

      The thing that most surprised us about the use of enforcement on major construction sites in Auckland was the relief felt by responsible operators that the ‘fly-by-night’ operators, who undercut prices by skipping or skimping on environmental controls, were finally being called to account.

      Many people who work in the construction sector are outdoors types. While they didn’t like the sediment running off their work sites into streams and onto beaches, they thought it was an inevitable consequence of progress and that it wasn’t possible to do anything about it. We got a strong sense of their relief that finally there was something they could do to manage what everyone had thought was an intractable problem.

      Even when the responsible operators were penalised for some reason, they took it in good faith. In the next chapter we’ll see where this startling and apparently counter-intuitive development led the industry.

Step 5:Technical guidelines: a performance benchmark

      The term ‘training’, as indicated in Chapter 1, implies the existence of a measurable performance standard or benchmark. In a context where environmental performance is required by legally enforceable permits, a detailed specification is essential so that it is very clear what people have to do in order to comply with them.

      For erosion and sediment control, such specifications usually focus on structural controls, though many are increasingly referring to non-structural procedures and processes as well. An example of a non-structural control is a pre-construction meeting between the permit holder and his or her agents (the consultants and contractors) and the regulatory body. Sometimes other stakeholders, including community or interest group representatives, may attend and such meetings are now included in the conditions attached to the project’s authorisations.

      Structural controls are often called ‘best management practices’, or BMPs (though the term could also refer to non-structural measures, too), and these BMPs are usually set out in a technical guideline.

      Such guidelines are not legal documents in themselves, but they effectively become enforceable when attached to the relevant environmental authorizations. While they can and do change over time to reflect new knowledge, they define current best practice against which training and both structural and non-structural measures can be assessed. This is what enables evaluation of the effectiveness of the erosion and sediment control measures on the ground, the BMPs themselves, and also, of course, the training.

      The introduction of the new TP90 erosion and sediment control