Minister tight-lipped as Te Waikoropupū Springs plan in doubt

The council wants to forge ahead with plans to enshrine protections of Te Waikoropupū Springs. Photo: Supplied/NelsonTasman.nz and Bare Kiwi

The minister for RMA reform is keeping mum on the fate of Tasman District Council's plan to protect some of the clearest water in the world.

The council wants to implement a Water Conservation Order (WCO) to protect Golden Bay's Te Waikoropupū Springs through a plan change process.

The WCO was issued in 2023 and is the first in the country to focus on groundwater and to seek an improvement in water quality.

The primary feature of the council's plan change was that it would require farmers to have plans to manage their impacts on the land, in addition to requiring resource consent for new activities that generated nitrates.

However, the government has issued a stop work order for most council plan changes while it continues work to overhaul the Resource Management Act.

Now, Tasman's plan change can only continue if granted an exemption from Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop.

The council has asked the minister for an exemption, but Federated Farmers have also written in opposition to the exemption, and to request that WCOs are scrapped.

Bishop has confirmed that he has received the correspondence from the council and Federated Farmers but would not provide details about a potential exemption or the future of WCOs.

"I will consider the council's application, alongside advice provided by ministry officials, in the coming weeks," he said.

"It's not appropriate to comment on the future of Water Conservation Orders (WCOs) as decisions have yet to be made on their role within the replacement legislation for the Resource Management Act."

Once a decision was made on the exemption, where agreed, a summary will be published on the Ministry for the Environment's website.

As of Monday evening, only one exemption is listed on the website, for Auckland, which was justified because it allowed for more efficient rezoning of land.

Activities like dairy farming above the aquifer which feeds Te Waikoropupū Springs can contribute to nitrate levels. Photo: Max Frethey / LDR

Federated Farmers Golden Bay provincial president Sue Brown said her letter to the minister was not about trying to lower environmental regulations.

"It's not about changing our commitment to protect the springs," she said.

"It's about changing the legislation, and the complexities of that legislation that sit behind water protection."

Brown said WCOs were "clumsy" and "very expensive", highlighting that some local Federated Farmers members spent $550,000 on legal and technical experts for Te Waikoropupū Springs' WCO process.

Updating the WCO, as the science develops and recording nitrate levels becomes more accurate, was just as complex, she said, and would be better as part of regular resource management process.

"We want to get into doing things and away from the litigious things. Money should be going into things that help, not the courts."

Brown added that farmers in the area above the aquifer which fed the springs were taking steps to limit their environmental impact.

"They've undertaken… landscape DNA studies, they're doing GPS nutrient recording, farm environmental plans, effluent management, all those kinds of things, wetland protection, riparian planting... The farmers in that area feel quite committed to this, and that's not going to change."

Chris Bishop. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro

Tasman District Council's environmental policy manager Barry Johnson said WCOs were a "relic" of 1970s legislation that had been dragged "kicking and screaming" into the modern day, but that national policy for freshwater contained protections similar to WCOs.

"There's scope, I think, to improve that protection mechanism, make it a bit more streamlined and a lot more responsive. [But], my personal view is, I think there will always be protections for outstanding water bodies."

The WCO contained a 2038 deadline to get nitrate levels in the aquifer to reach 0.41 milligrams per litre, down from its current level of approximately 0.45 mg/L, which was potentially close to a "tipping point".

Johnson expected a "significant" delay of at least three years until the RMA's replacement was in place.

If WCOs were retained and that target hadn't been met, he said the council would be obliged to implement "some pretty stringent controls" for all sectors of the catchment, including dairying and growing, which was why the council was seeking the plan change exemption.

"It could be quite a significant economic and social impact," Johnson said.

"The council's trying to do what it has to do, and do it the best it can for the springs and for everyone that lives in the valley."

Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.