The high level of public interest in itself is not enough to publicly notify fracking resource consents, the Hawke's Bay Regional Council Corporate and Strategic Committee was told yesterday.
Regional council group manager resource management Iain Maxwell told the committee that despite there being a "special circumstances" component of the consent assessment process, this could not be invoked simply because of a high level of public interest.
Public notification was about the assessment of effects of the proposed activity, and whether the effects of that activity were likely to be more than minor. If more than minor, notification may be required, he said.
"So really the key test comes down to an assessment of effects, and whether those effects are more than minor," Mr Maxwell said. If they were not: "you would have a hard job to justify notification".
"It's an area that we're very cognisant of the level of interest.
"The key thing is that we go through this process fairly vigourously." Apache Corporation and TAG Oil have formed a joint venture partnership to explore for oil on the East Coast, and have been looking at three different sites. One fell inside Hawke's Bay Regional Council boundaries, while the other two bordered them.