14 March 2016
MEDIA ADVISORY
Upper Waitaki Water Zone Committee to consider two new projects

A multi-award winning charity is seeking feedback and support from the Upper Waitaki Water Zone Committee on two proposals in the zone at its meeting on April 15.

Sustainable Coastlines Charitable Trust founder Sam Judd will attend the zone committee’s meeting to discuss the possibility of a “Love your Lake” campaign with regards to Lake Benmore, and projects in Willow Burn.

The organisation, which focusses on cleaning up rubbish from waterways and improving water quality, has helped motivate more than 48,000 people to remove over 1 million litres of rubbish from waterways and plant more than 25,000 trees on the riparian margin.

The proposed “Love Your Lake” project will focus efforts around developing community stewardship for Lake Benmore.

It seeks to do this through getting the community actively involved in caring for the lake through clean-ups, and plantings. It also seeks to provide composting toilets at key sites along the lake, and create educational materials on the impact of humans on the lake.

The Willow Burn project would build on the work of local farmers and their Farm Environment Plans by assisting in implementing their FEPs to improve water quality while still providing for stock water and financially sustainable farms; protecting and enhancing natural habitats; and creating educational and training programmes to improve long-term water quality.

The proposal includes setting up community group which would then establish a charitable trust so the group could enter into agreements, receive and disburse funds and develop a self-sustaining model to run the projects.

The zone committee will also consider how to improve the effectiveness of compliance monitoring in light of the 2014-15 Compliance Monitoring Annual Report results.

The report, released last month, revealed 342 written warnings, 81 abatement notices, 36 infringement notices were issued in the Upper Waitaki zone. There were also two informations laid in court and three successful prosecutions.

The report covered the period from July 2014 to June 2015.

Among the proposals to be discussed, is the possibility of increasing resource management officers (RMOs) on the ground to monitor and enforce requirements of water permits. Those which have complex requirements and those in highly allocated catchments will be specifically targeted in the monitoring.
In contrast, changes to the compliance monitoring programme for dairy shed effluent hopes to increase rates of compliance while reducing the amount of time RMOs spend on monitoring farms.

The development of monitoring guidelines which reflect the zone committee’s priorities will also be considered by the zone committee.

Already, work to improve compliance and monitoring is underway with the development of a data management system to ensure water usage data is monitored and followed up on where non-compliance is identified.

Click here for full agenda.

Upper Waitaki Water Zone Committee Meeting
Friday 15 April 2016, 9:30am
Mackenzie Country Inn, Twizel

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