Potential impacts of local government reform on lakes, rivers, and waterways
Stu Hutchings is not a doom merchant but his concerns about biosecurity and therefore biodiversity are born of contemplating scenarios the rest of us would prefer not to think about.
Hutchings has worked for OSPRI (Operational Solutions for Primary Industries) for more than a decade, the kiwifruit industry in biosecurity as well as the Ministry for Primary Industries spending around two years as MPI’s chief biosecurity officer.
Some organisms we’ve been lucky enough to avoid – foot and mouth, mad cow disease – others, Caulerpa, Didymo, invasive freshwater clams, we’re fighting, or monitoring (bird flu), and one, Mycoplasma bovis, we’re hopefully close to being able to say we’ve eradicated.
The uncertain future of regional councils as protectors of the environment at catchment level raises questions, he says. “They're directly responsible for protection of waterways and the quality of our water and flora and fauna… if all of those regional councils disappear, will there be a focus on that regulatory approach to environment protection?”
The push to emphasise economic priorities above all is a concern. He cites the current example in Canterbury of nitrate levels climbing to the point of toxicity in some communities.
“The regional council's job is to manage that risk and to try and either mitigate it or to manage it if they find it. And there's been that tension there already. Now imagine if they weren't there looking at the exacerbator – potentially the farmers and whoever's leaching nitrates into the soils and the water. Under a unified council, how do you make sure those priorities get managed because everybody's focused on the economic drivers at the moment, one of which has been farm productivity.”
The fact that a single exacerbator hasn’t been found is a worry. If the policy for fewer councils is being driven by economic imperatives, he asks: “how do you make sure that correct prioritisation of the environment and our quality of water and our biodiversity is maintained.”
Is local government really going to get simpler?
The simplification of policies that any proposed larger bodies implement could be helpful, Hutchings says, so they're more nationally than regionally driven. “But how will that get interpreted or done on the ground and what ability will those unitary authorities have to make their own sets of policies?
“If they do have some powers, then you can get that local representation and bespoke policy to fit a region, but also then are you not making it worse because you're ending up, say, in the Waikato, potentially having five different sets (of rules).
“And so, it's not an approach to a single catchment anymore. It’s five approaches to the catchment.” What was a drive for simplification might end up being more complex, he says. Fewer regional councils and district councils overall, but less integrated environmental control across catchments.
Hutchings is not alone in this fear. The recently passed Natural Environment Bill and Planning Bill will add to confusion and uncertainty, said chief executive of the Environmental Defence Society Gary Taylor in a recent column.
Taylor wrote: “The legislation places development and private property interests ahead of the public interest in a healthy environment. Its so-called environmental limits are not genuine bottom lines: they can be traded off against economic aspirations, subjected to almost open-ended exemptions or overridden by ministers.
“Amendments removed requirements to establish resource-use caps, such as a nitrogen discharge cap needed to protect a stressed catchment. In their place, councils will often have to rely on non-binding action plans.”
He predicted a hot mess of claims, valuation disputes and litigation as some landowners tested the boundaries of new entitlements.
“Councils, the new Planning Tribunal, the Environment Court and the higher courts will be required to interpret uncertain concepts and resolve conflicts the legislation itself fails to settle, with councils unable to assess the ultimate costs of compensation to ratepayers…
“That reform, promoted by ACT as cutting red tape, will create armies of consultants, valuers and lawyers, prolonged administrative processes and years of uncertainty. The complexity will be magnified because major legislative, policy, institutional and local government changes are all occurring at once.”
Will we follow Aussie in abandoning amalgamation a few years down the track?
Hutchings points to local body reform experience in New South Wales as a cautionary tale.
There, a statewide push for amalgamation was touted by number crunchers as helping meet rate caps as economies of scale would produce efficiencies. However, when this was tested by academics measuring the post-amalgamation reality, the researchers’ concern about how sharing debt over a much wider area would play out was realised.
Rates increases, despite efforts to cap them at up 3.5%, were blowing out to 50% and 70% every four or five years as councils sought to catch up on the likes of infrastructure spending.
“It didn't work. And then there was the other problem of representation, whole communities died because they'd had a local voice and they’d built a culture in that local community.”
With reduced representation on a big new amalgamated council, “they just kept getting voted down for community spend… and they just disappeared as little towns.”
Some areas have actually undone the amalgamation, Hutchings says. “Their experience was that economic theory and practical reality are two very different things because the whole thing is community based… and you can't put a value on that community. So, by just trying to do it on economic theory of efficiency of scale is a nonsense.”
At a more granular level he has concerns funds flowing from a district council to a strategic partner like Bike Taupō – and its affiliate Huka Trapping – might be in jeopardy. “That could certainly be at risk if we (Taupō) were to amalgamate with other areas because then you’d be competing with prioritisation across a much wider area.”
Taupō would be one community amongst a group fighting for funds with only X number of councillors on a larger council who would have a local interest, he says.
“That's also one of the real downsides of amalgamation that could have a negative impact on our biodiversity, but also on the waterway system… And it's the problem you have when you try and apply economic theory to a far more complex environment and local body system.”
Stu Hutching’s Ideas in Summary
What amalgamation could mean:
Regional Councils are regulatory bodies empowered to protect environmental waterways, flora and fauna through management of pests, monitoring and where necessary penalizing those breaking rules.
District Councils tend to be exacerbators of environmental degradation through use of landfills, development of housing, roading and management of sewerage and water.
Regional Councils are based around catchments whereas District Councils tend to be population based. It is unclear how the unitary authorities would operate across larger catchments (such as Waikato River). Would there be multiple smaller groups across the new Authorities? This could result in a fragmented approach to protection of waterways and lakes.
Combining the two means there needs to be clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities to ensure environmental protection.
Environmental safeguards could be compromised because of competing financial priorities and desire to keep rates low.
Representation could become an issue as protection of smaller waterways and rivers competes for funding across multiple towns.
Biodiversity and water quality drivers would be competing with infrastructure and other core spending across larger areas, resulting in reduction of quality of lakes, rivers and waterways.
Some district councils have much higher debt ratios than others. Amalgamation means that there will be an averaging out of this debt, meaning some areas will be worse off. This could directly impact on prioritization of environmental expenditure.
Analysis of amalgamation from other jurisdictions:
In Australia there have been many amalgamations (especially in New South Wales) driven by States believing that economies of scale would result in economic efficiencies and consequential reduction in rates. In reality research has demonstrated that this has not occurred, in fact the opposite has happened. A number of these amalgamations have now been overturned.
Many communities have also felt severely disenfranchised because of loss of local voice. This has resulted in the loss of communities as their support and sense of local identity has become diluted.
The loss of local voice also means drivers for protection of local waterways and lakes is also diluted.
Above article written by Chris Marshall. Funding for this work was provided by BayTrust.