Initial talks in GDC's water plan under way

Federated Farmers - Cathy Begley , Charlie reynolds , Debbie Bidlake

THE Gisborne District Council hearings process on its freshwater plan opened last week with preliminary discusions on how the submissions will be heard and Federated Farmers was well represented.

The Federation’s senior water and environment policy specialist Cathy Begley attended the first pre-hearing meeting on the new Regional Freshwater plan, along with Gisborne-Wairoa provincial president Charlie Reynolds and senior regional policy advisor Debbie Bidlake.

“The big issue debated was how the National Policy Statement’s requirement to ‘maintain or improve overall water quality’ is applied in Gisborne,” Mr Reynolds said.

The council has been measuring different aspects (called “attributes”) of water quality for some time, such as nitrogen, phosphorous, pH and temperature, and proposes to use the mean number of these measurements as Gisborne’s water quality baseline.

“The Council currently proposes that even if those numbers are within a range (called “bands”) that is considered excellent at a national level, it will not permit any downward movement within those bands.

“The Council’s current interpretation gets us bogged down in technicalities to the point that we are losing sight of what are our community values,” Mr Renolds said.

“We should be protecting the things that make rivers special to us, whether that is swimming, fishing, or feeding stock, rather than fixating on numbers.”

The first formal hearing will take place next month. Cathy Begley said Federated Farmers would send a clear message.

“Farmers want a flexible and community-led freshwater management approach that enables farmers to adapt their land use practices to different market and climatic conditions, while managing their environmental effects responsibly.”

Forty submitters have put forward submissions on the draft council plan and around 1000 points have been raised for the independent commission hearing the matter to consider.