Good evening everyone,
Thought Id post this up as this affects everyone no matter which region
First, the news of the day…
Breaking news first…
Today the Government retrospectively changed the law to effectively put to bed the ORC’s plan change they were moving forward on. This is a great outcome for our cause.
ORC axes vote on environment pan
On the upside, Te Mana o Te Wai, the concept that puts the health of waterways as top priority will be gone! In my view, this is a great outcome as it is too pro-environment without considering productivity issues, and is so vague that it could be easily manipulated to suit certain parties.
However, the Land & Water Plan will still be notified eventually (without Te Mana o Te Wai). At a guess, this will most likely be late next year rather than late this month.
A draft plan was released today before this announcement by the government killing the changes.
Moving forward, we will still have a notified plan from ORC so we will require a plan in answer to that.
The new information out about the ORC’s proposed Land and Water Plan will create rules that supersede the current ones regarding permitted activity rules for suction dredging. This is helpful, as it shows their line of thinking. In earlier plans, there was no permitted activity rule for dredging, but now we have one which is critical for Otago, and other regions as a blue print for when they do their next plans.
Before this announcement this afternoon, what we have seen so far alludes to the ORC retaining the permitted activity rule (meaning you can dredge without a resource consent) on some rivers. Many more rivers have been put into the category of requiring a resource consent including rivers around the Waipori region and around Queenstown. This could all change as the ORC scrambles to rewrite a new draft plan. The new permitted activity rule for dredging has been changed because of our response to the ORC, and also because Pete Ravenscroft, the ORC water scientist agrees with our arguments. So, that is a significant win by us for a start.
Our freshwater ecological report will eventually be sent out to all donors, which shows that our environmental impacts are minor. We are just waiting on a slight revision to the report before it is released, in order to better articulate the science and be supportive of our cause. Watch this space….
Ill be contacting many of you by phone over the next days to emphasize this. Apologies if I miss you.
We still have a long way to go but all in all, it is looking very favourable for the gold dredging community!
Cheers,
Chris