MEDIA RELEASE

Consent holders to pay more for management and monitoring of resources
For immediate release: 23 March 2009

Environment Bay of Plenty is responsible for a range of resources which involve monitoring, processing and administering. This includes processing resource consents, processing certificates of compliance and reviewing resource consent conditions.

Section 36 of the Resource Management Act (RMA) gives councils the power to recover “reasonable” costs associated with administration, monitoring and supervision of consents and compliance, plus monitoring of the natural resources we are charged with managing – air quality, geothermal resources, groundwater and surface water quantity and quality.

Environment Bay of Plenty’s Regulation, Monitoring and Investigation Deputy Chairwoman Karen Summerhays said that in the past the cost to do this had been subsidised 80 percent from the general rates and 20 percent from consent holders.

“Currently general ratepayers are subsidising the resource users – and general ratepayers are receiving little or no benefit from the resource. It is only fair that the consent holders pay for the management and monitoring of the resource,” Councillor Summerhays said.

The change to fees will affect all current consent holders across the region, with increased contributions for management of resources for some consent categories, including water takes and discharges, and air discharges.

“We are looking to make changes to the annual charge and reapportion the costs for some consent categories, including issuing and monitoring water takes and discharges, and air discharges,” she said.

Each year we develop a charging policy that sets out what costs we intend to recover from carrying out our regulatory functions. Any proposed changes to this charging policy must go through a special consultative procedure.

“This year, we’re proposing changes in a number of areas including the application charges, the annual charges and the apportionment of environmental management and monitoring costs between general funds and resource users,” Councillor Summerhays said.

The annual charge is made up of three components – the base charge, the compliance/supervision charge and the regional/impact monitoring component. The Base charge will increase from $80 to $85.

The Compliance/Supervision fee, based on our requirement to monitor consents issued and our compliance monitoring policy, will increase in line with Consumer Price Index to cover the increased costs of monitoring.

Regional/Impact Monitoring charges, which relate to the broader state of the environment monitoring and management of resources, will be reapportioned across consent holders groups according to the extent that the resource monitoring and management programme is of benefit to them more than ratepayers generally ie. the more consent holders have or use of the resource the less there is available to others.

Staff Hourly Fixed Charges
Under our Section 36 policy, charges for staff time can be incurred by consent and plan change applicants, consent holders and those requesting information from Council. The hourly fixed charges have been reviewed resulting in increases across most of the staff positions.

ENDS

© Scoop Media