Extra cost for land developers

Developers of former orcharding land in Hastings may have to pay thousands of extra dollars to make the land safe for residential use after the Hastings District Council adopted more stringent agrichemical residue standards than national guidelines suggested by the Ministry for the Environment.
The council set Hastings' arsenic trigger level at 30mg per kg while proposed national standards, which will go out to public consultation next month, are 100mg per kg. Hastings' copper trigger levels were set at 2300mg per kg when the suggested national standard is 1000.
The council guidelines, recommended by the hearings committee on September 22 after a two-day hearing, could be dumped when the ministry sets its national guidelines next year, meaning developers who had spent money on making sections safe could have to spend thousands of dollars making them extra safe.
"This worries me a little bit," said Cr Norm Speers, who is on the hearings committee.
"It could cost a lot of our ratepayers a lot of money but (environmental manager) Ian Macdonald says we have just got to wear it."
Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule said developers had the option of waiting for the national levels, although the ministry could not say when they would be introduced.
Cr Rod Heaps wanted to know why the council couldn't wait for the national guidelines before putting guidelines in the district plan.
Mr Macdonald said that was one of the options. "The whole (hearing) process would have to be gone through again. We have based this on the best information we have at the moment.
"If a national standard was to come out at 100 it will force us to change our (district) plan. We recommend it remains at 30. Let's push on and get this out there."
Hearings committee chairman Dinah Williams said waiting for national guidelines would be a "great mistake".
"The ministry have put 100mg per kg out for consultation. We can't say whether the level will remain."
Cr Tim Tinker said the ministry had not made a submission, saying the council's level should be 100.
"People are forgetting that we are putting in guidelines to protect public health in the absence of national standards at present."
Hastings ratepayer David Renouf, who described the hearing that pre-empted national standards as a waste of ratepayers' money, said the Royal Forest and Bird Society of New Zealand's Handbook of Environmental Law disagreed with the ministry's claim that national levels would supersede the district plan.
District plan rules which set a lower standard were subordinate to the national standard, while district plan rules that set a high standard would prevail over the national standard, he said.
The council ignored calls from the New Zealand Fruitgrowers' Federation, Vegetable and Potato Growers' Federation, Berryfruit Growers' Federation and Federated Farmers, to wait for the national guidelines.