Water Quality Policy Implementation

You Tube video - Available on the Ministry for the Environment website - www. mfe. govt. nz / fres h - water / reform - programme / reforming - how - we - manage - fresh - water.

Land and Water Forum - Formed in 2009 as a stakeholder - led group to provide solutions to freshwater management issues - Need to improve water management to grow the economy while protecting water quality - Avoid polluting now causing expensive clean ups later, learn from past mistakes - The Forum made over 50 recommendations - Some of recommendations lead to the NPS

- S NPS purpose is to state objectives and policies for matters of national significance - NPSFM includes specific objectives and policies for managing water quality - Councils must implement the objectives and policies as set out in the NPS - Maybe through Plan changes or Plan reviews - Maybe immediately or staged over time

- There are different ways to protect water quality, sometimes its rules but it can be education or information - The community can decide what is important to protect, how good they want water quality to be – good enough for native fish, or swimming, or to drink – these are values - Objectives are written to protect values, these can be different for different areas

- Values - Swimming - Fishing - Native Fish Habitat - An objective would state that the water quality in the Rai River needs to be able to provide for safe swimming, fish safe to eat and a fit place for native fish to live and breed

- Then policies would say how this would be done, e. g. that E Coli and sediment levels had to maintained and improved - Then rules might say - the E Coli levels must be less than <260 per 100 ml - the excavation must not cause sediment in the river - a consent is needed for a new dairy farm - river margins need to be planted with native plants

- Once policies have been implemented then we have to monitor how effective they are - Water quality monitoring programme as part of State of Environment reporting - Monitoring of individual resource consents - Monitoring in response to complaints

- If monitoring shows policies or rules are not effective in protecting water quality, then they need to be reviewed and possibly changed - If monitoring shows that water quality is declining because people are not complying with rules or conditions of resource consents, then further action needs to be taken