Speaking for the regional sector group of Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ), Leeder said the 11 regional councils and five unitary councils in that sector were at different stages along the National Policy Statement (NPS) pathway.
Many would be signing off new regional and environmental plans this year, he said.
However, the central government inclusion of monitoring for macro-invertebrates was going to add another layer of complexity.
“Essentially, the regional councils have to implement what [the] National Government wants, so we will have to find ways of doing the macro-invertebrates,” Leeder said.
“The expectations of members of the public as regards freshwater quality have risen right across the country and this is what central government is addressing.”
Leeder said that the new livestock fencing and exclusion proposal in the Clean Water package was in response to agreements reached in the Land and Water Forum process.
Some individual regional councils and LGNZ said central government had muddied the waters over swimmability status by publishing maps on the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) website.
MfE used a mix of regional council monitoring and computer modelling based on land use.
It cut across what LGNZ was already doing, more meaningfully and more up-to-date, with its Land Air Water Aotearoa (LAWA) website.
“LGNZ supports informing the public about progress on water quality, despite our concerns around the methods and data used in the maps,” president Lawrence Yule said.
The most up-to-date information was available through local government’s LAWA, Can I Swim Here? function.
Northland Regional Council (NRC) chairman Bill Shepherd said the MfE maps appeared to show that Northland had some of the least swimmable rivers, streams and lakes in the country, but NRC’s own summer water quality testing told a different story.
Near the end of a 14-week testing season, results showed that 93.5% ‑ 158 out of 169 freshwater samples ‑ met national guideline values, meaning they were considered suitable for swimming.
In coastal areas where members of the public most wanted to swim, that figure was 99.8%.
Northland rivers and streams were often short, shallow and passed though pastoral areas susceptible to run-off during moderate to heavy rainfall events, all of which could negatively influence water quality in the short term.
NRC had reservations about the methodology and historical data used to generate the maps, but nevertheless it would closely study the MfE findings.
“Where improvements are possible and practical, we’re obviously very keen to encourage this, subject of course to the legislation central government says we must operate under,” Shepherd said.
Otago Regional Council (ORC) chairman Stephen Woodhead said the maps were based on modelling and only showed water quality at a moment in time.
For example, MfE ranked Lake Wanaka’s swimmability below that of Hawea and Wakatipu lakes, but that didn’t align with ORC’s monitoring data.
ORC supported the principle behind livestock exclusion from waterways in hill and high country but would need to study the practicalities of implementation.
“Some fencing may create adverse effects, and we will be submitting on the proposed regulations to ensure they are workable.”
Horizons (Manawatu-Wanganui) Regional Council said it was in advance of the latest Clean Water requirements, for instance on monitoring of macro-invertebrates, and its One Plan exceeded what central government wanted in many parts.
The plan had achieved measureable improvements in measures of water quality over the past decade, it claimed.
Yule also called for a new holistic approach to water policy.
Health and environmental quality standards, rights to access and use water, and the cost, affordability and provision of infrastructure that delivers water to users and treats wastewater and storm water weren’t always considered together.
“We have seen the pressure that land intensification can have on the quality of our waterways,” Yule said.
“Increasingly we are aware that urban water infrastructure, like ageing wastewater systems and a deficit of stormwater infrastructure, is having an adverse impact on our freshwater quality in the future.
“Decisions made in one area fundamentally impact on whether outcomes can be achieved in the others, so water policy needs to be considered in a connected way.”
LGNZ had begun a major piece of policy work, called Water 2050, to develop a framework for water that coherently integrated policy relating to freshwater quality and quantity, standards, rights and allocation, land use, 3 Waters infrastructure, cost and affordability, and funding.
