The price of new national standards for forestry could be the protection of Nelson’s waterways, says city councillor Brian McGurk.
Nelson city councillor and chairman of the Nelson Biodiversity Forum McGurk said the proposed National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry (NESPF), which have been out for consultation, showed “vested interests having a bit much influence”.
“The concerns I’ve got are the standards they have are very minimal standards,” he said.
McGurk said although he was supportive of having a national standard, the draft regulations could ensure cost reduction and other benefits for large-scale companies “at the expense of the wider community and to the detriment of the environment”.
In its submision McGurk said the council outlined concerns including the “risk of erosion and sedimentation through lack of controls, inconsistencies that didn’t seem to talk to the National Policy Statement on Fresh Water Management, the potential conflict with our role as a regional council and some of the fuzzy language.”
The standards proposed under the Resource Management Act would create one set of national rules for forestry operators, who currently have to work with different rules for each council. The standards aim to also improve certainty about environmental outcomes and reduce consent costs, the Ministry for Primary Industries consultation document says.
In doing so, it take controls over forestry plantations out of councils’ hands and creates a largely permissive approach for the industry, McGurk said.
He said there were reasons for many of the different rules between councils, as “we’ve got different landscapes, different geology, different slopes, and different rules apply”.
The proposed standards would vary for “local environments” according to three factors: soil erosion susceptibility, fish spawning and wilding pine spread risk.
The more risky a forestry activity is deemed according to those factors, the tighter the rules would be.
Plantations in Nelson, like the majority of those around the country, would be listed as low or moderate risk, meaning companies don’t need to get resource consents from the council provided they meet the minimum standards.
McGurk said this meant the council would likely only inspect a site in response to a complaint.
“If there are no complaints we probably wouldn’t even visit the site so we wouldn’t be aware of what’s going on.”
Although he wasn’t worried about the forestry companies currently working in Nelson, there was a risk less scrupulous loggers determined to cut costs could see “environmental considerations come off second best”.
The main concern is keeping the city’s waterways free from sedimentation. Clean water was something Nelsonians valued greatly, McGurk said.
“They see things like having the ability to swim, be able to catch fish, the rivers having a flow that is sustainable and support aquatic life, as probably the bottom line.
“So we would like the ability where necessary, to be more stringent or impose rules that are more stringent. At the moment it’s almost unconstrained as long as they meet the minimum standards.”
Nelson City Council group manager strategy and environment Clare Barton said there was limited scope for councils to protect significant natural areas, but in general the council would have to enforce the permissive approach taken if the standards were introduced.
She said most local councils and Local Government New Zealand had made a submission to MPI.
“Certainly for councils where there might actually be some need to retain some local control because of different factors, that opportunity may be lost.”
Nelson MP and Minister for the Environment Nick Smith said currently forestry rules nationally were “inconsistent, confusing and inefficient”.
“It’s been identified by the forestry companies in our own region you can have three different rules depending on whether you are in Tasman, Nelson or Marlborough,” he said.
“The primary purpose of the NES is to have a consistent set of rules across the country that vary not in accord to council boundaries but according to the real environmental area and environmental risks.”
The NES would allow councils to enforce a tougher standard in special circumstances, but “they have to be able to show that there are special circumstances not that they want some arbitrarily different rule”, and it would have to be based on scientific grounds.
He said overall the standards would make forestry “environmentally tighter” and on average it would make things cheaper for “New Zealand incorporated”.
“When the government looks at things they’re looking at the cost of all the parties,” he said.
“What we know is very inefficient and costly is having every council in the country developing and administering their own rules around forestry.”
Smith rejected the forestry industry had too much say in forming the standards and said key environmental NGOs had been on the working party.
“That is actually pretty important because they create jobs and wealth for our district.”
Smith said his intention was to make a decision on the final document before Christmas.
– Stuff
Written by Anna Bradley-Smith