Rivers Fight Goes Public Across Taranaki

Sunday, 16 June 2024, 6:36 pm
Article: Craig Ashworth - Local Democracy Reporting

The fight for the future of Taranaki’s polluted rivers and streams goes public Monday June 17 at Ōkato and Ōpunakē in the first of 16 community consultation sessions around the Maunga.

Taranaki Regional Council also plans to take its proposed Land and Freshwater Plan to marae across the region from next month.

Until now the battle over fixing the region’s broken waterways has been taking place in the council chambers – a public space, but rarely visited by regular citizens.

A new generation of council officers overturned decades of council spin in March with an honest account of waterway degradation. 

Councillors were told bug life is dying off in two-thirds of monitored streams, it will take at least 30 years to make rivers swimmable, and some hill-country rivers will probably never meet sediment standards.

Now the show hits the road, to hear from locals about their awa for the first time since the council’s startlingly blunt reassessment.

In one corner is the farmer lobby, furious that Taranaki’s freshwater rules are being reset before their new Government has time to rewrite resource management laws.

The National-led Government has said it will overturn freshwater regulations and resource management law to favour easier development.

In an impressively consistent campaign, the arguments of the Federated Farmers rep at the TRC table are in lockstep with the Feds’ media statements and with the Act Party’s associate agriculture and environment minister Andrew Hoggard – himself national Feds president until a year ago.

It’s crunch time for farmer resistance, as the council has just announced new draft targets to improve waterways including standards on sediment, excess nutrients, E. coli bacteria and now also water allocation.

In the opposite corner are hapū and iwi, water users like fishers and surfers in polluted coastal waters, environmentalists – and a majority of the public, according to the council’s own surveys.

They say enough complacency: toughen the local rules so rivers and streams get clean and healthy.

Iwi representatives on the powerful Policy and Planning Committee and the first councillor in the new Māori seat Bonita Bigham have consistently urged stronger action on freshwater.

At last week’s Policy and Planning meeting senior staff urged councillors to get out and hear directly what people expect for their waterways, which the council is meant to protect.

In November the council revealed all of Taranaki’s 17 tested river swimming spots graded “poor” for the risk of getting sick from the pooh bug E. coli – the lowest possible rating.

In March TRC environment quality director Abby Matthews said the state of waterways is unacceptable and people have had enough.

“They want to see the rivers in the state where they’re more swimmable more often.”

The farmer lobby has made its opposition as crystal clear as the streams aren’t.

Federated Farmers Taranaki president and representative to TRC Leedom [subs: spelling correct] Gibbs accused officers of coercive consultation to get the results they want.

“The consultation that was done in September, it was very hard to not agree with statements… There's not a lot of room in there to say ‘but’.”

Donald McIntyre – a regional councillor for 16 years and Federated Farmers Taranaki president while a councillor– warned staff they would struggle with farmers sick of “silly rules”.

“Over the last two or three years, that goodwill has been burnt pretty severely… So people have switched off.”

Council policy director Lisa Hawkins told councillors the community sessions were brought forward to avoid the calving season and industry groups were being invited to four whole-day seminars on the changes.

After quarter of a century at the council table, ninth-term councillor and former senior Fonterra scientist Neil Walker still pleads special rights for farmers over everyone else.

“You get lots of people who have, shall we say opinions about things, but it doesn't actually affect what they do, and other people whose livelihoods depend upon them.

“And we have to be very discriminating to be sure that we're actually getting real opinions from the people who would be affected, rather than just general opinions from people at the street.

Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga iwi have put their hands up for hui with likely dates later in July being finalised.

Iwi participation is being led by two independent pou taiao (environment planners) chosen by the eight iwi authorities of Taranaki, paid for by council, and administered by Te Kotahitanga o te Ātiawa.

An Auditor-General’s report has found hugely improved relationships between Taranaki Māori and their regional council – particularly around freshwater - but that more is needed.

“In our view, there are opportunities for the Council to draw on the strong relationships some of its staff have when developing a council-wide approach to working with iwi and hapū on freshwater.”

Forty-year TRC veteran resource management director Fred McLay replayed his oft-repeated mantra that the council was “on a journey” with Māori.

“I feel personally proud and happy about where we’ve got to.”

Mitch Ritai of Ngāti Mutunga and Tuhi-Ao Bailey of Taranaki – the Tokomaru and Kurahaupō waka representatives on the committee – both said the report reflected improvement they had seen in council relationships with iwi.

But Ritai warned against the advances being skin deep – and hapū need more of a say.

“We have a really good relationship at a higher level. It's just as it starts to go down through the different layers of the organisation, we don't see that same level of rapport, that same level of partnership.”

“I truly appreciate the amount of effort that's gone into developing the relationship… a lot more cohesion, a lot more collaboration, and it's that type of working together that's going to help us as a region move forward, so tēnā koutou.”

Monday’s drop-in community consultation sessions are in Ōkato at Hempton Hall from 10am-1pm and Ōpunakē at the Sinclair Events Centre from 3-6:30pm.

Other sessions continue through to July 1 with an online session on July 3, details on the TRC website.

© Scoop Media

Local Democracy Reporting

Content from the Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) service is published by Scoop as a registered New Zealand Media Outlet LDR Partner.