The three Eastern Bay of Plenty District Councils have made a joint submission seeking amendments to proposed natural hazard provisions in the Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s newly operative Regional Policy Statement (RPS).
The submission relates to a proposed plan change developed to address objections to the RPS natural hazard policies. While not challenging the basic premise of the plan change, the Councils are concerned about a lack of clarity around the management of natural hazards in areas of existing development and in the risk assessment methodology, as well as the potential cost impacts for local authorities and landowners.
Whakatāne District Mayor, Tony Bonne, says the proposed plan change is technically very complex, in part because of inconsistencies in the terminology used. “Our submission seeks a number of amendments to address that and also seeks greater transparency about how the plan change will affect the property rights of landowners in areas which have been assessed to have a high natural hazard risk,” he says. “In area of existing development, owners should be able to undertake actions to reduce risk where it is cost effective and practical to do so.”
He says the plan change also proposes that implementation responsibility for existing use or development subject to a high natural hazard risk should pass to the Regional Council, but no explanation is provided about how regulation of existing uses would be achieved.
The Mayor of the Ōpōtiki District, John Forbes, says the Eastern Bay Councils would also like to see further economic assessments undertaken into the cost, benefits and application of risk assessments. “We would like to see greater certainty around the costs which communities and individual developers will be expected to bear. Staging and cost-sharing provisions for susceptibility and risk assessments should also be specified as part of the natural hazard provisions.”
Kawerau Mayor Malcolm Campbell says the plan change proposes a highly prescriptive approach to risk assessment, which featured a number of technical uncertainties. “The prescribed method may also differ from that used in hazard assessments which Councils have already undertaken, at considerable expense to ratepayers, and while the policy allows the Regional Council Chief Executive to accept alternative methodologies, the criteria involved need to be clarified,” he says.
Submissions, and potentially further submissions, will be heard before the plan change becomes operative. The District Councils will then have to give effect to the RPS provisions through their next District Plan reviews.