Dairying, Housing : More on Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

Irrigation [lincoln.ac.nz]

█ Interpretation of the existing RMA has led to dairy intensification destroying waterways and threatening public health and welfare, in large measure.
A bit of a tour….

### Stuff.co.nz Last updated 14:29, March 23 2016
Canterbury rumbly-gut outbreak linked to dairying
By Pat Deavoll
An outbreak of “rumbly-gut” among communities in Canterbury has Waikato veterinarian and agri-ecology consultant Alison Dewes concerned. She thinks the outbreak is the result of dairy intensification and irrigation contaminating public drinking water. Thirty per cent of the region’s shallow wells have already experienced an increase in nitrogen and pathogen levels after 10-15 years of irrigation on shallow lighter soils, she says. “We have the highest rates of ecoli diseases in the world, and the highest rate of campylobacter, cryptosporidia and giardia in communities in the Hinds region. We have the highest rates of zoonoses (disease spread from animals to humans) in the world in some of the irrigated/dairy catchments like Selwyn and Hinds and the government is promoting a further 40,000ha of irrigation in an already allocated and at risk catchment. Economics and dairy intensification are trumping public health and welfare.”
Read more

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### NZ Herald Online 8:42 AM Wednesday Mar 9, 2016
40pc of farms fail to lodge consents
By Zaryd Wilson – Wanganui Chronicle
Forty per cent of dairy farms required to lodge a resource consent application with Horizons Regional Council have not done so. A total of 229 dairy operations were required to have lodged an application by January 1 this year under the regional council’s One Plan, which aims to limit nitrogen pollution of waterways. The One Plan – adopted by the council in 2014 – limits nitrogen leaching by intensive farm operations, namely dairy, commercial horticulture, cropping and intensive sheep and beef farming. Figures released to the Chronicle under the Official Information Act reveal that only 137 of the 229 dairy operations which came under new rules have lodged consent applications. The new rules took effect on July 1 last year, and farms had six months – up until January 1 – to apply.
Read more

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Wetlands [nzarm.org.nz]

26.11.15 NZH: Resource Management Act reforms to be introduced
The Government will introduce its long awaited Resource Management Act reforms to Parliament next week after securing the support of the Maori Party. The reforms to the country’s main planning document stalled two years ago when National’s support partners refused to back them because of their potential impact on the environment.

Ministry for the Environment

█ About the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
This page has information on the amendments proposed in 2015 to the Resource Management Act 1991.

█ Resource Legislation Amendment Bill [New Zealand Legislation website]
The Resource Legislation Amendment Bill (the Bill) was introduced to Parliament on 26 November 2015.

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Leading New Zealand law firm Chapman Tripp say:
OPINION Most of the provisions in the Bill have been telegraphed in advance so there is little to surprise. If passed as drafted, it has the capacity to reduce costs and speed up planning processes – but probably only at the margins. For more radical and meaningful change we may have to await the results of the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into urban planning (see Chapman Tripp’s commentary here, dated 2.11.15).

RMA Reform Bill – busy with change but less than National wanted
Chapman Tripp 26 November 2015
OPINION The ‘phase two’ RMA reforms, initially to have been passed in 2014, have now finally been introduced to Parliament as the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. The Bill is a busy piece of legislation running to more than 200 pages, and aims to help streamline planning and consenting processes. But National has had to abandon its proposals to remove the “hierarchy” some saw as enshrined in the existing Part 2 of the RMA, promoting environmental values ahead of economic development in sections six and seven. After the loss of the Northland seat to Winston Peters in March, it does not have the votes to get the wider and more far-reaching changes through. We look at the Bill:
Major changes
● Requiring councils to follow national planning templates (once such templates are available) with standardised provisions across the country.
● A range of measures aimed at producing faster, more flexible planning processes. These include: tighter timelines for plan production and the introduction of two new tracks – a collaborative track and a streamlined track.
● Reduced requirements for consents – allowing councils discretion not to require a resource consent for minor changes, creating a new 10 day fast-track for simple consents and eliminating the need for an RMA consent when consenting is provided for in other legislation.
● Stronger national direction – especially in relation to hot-button issues like providing for new housing or addressing dairy stock in rivers.
Read more

Blue skies review for urban planning – the take-off
Chapman Tripp 15 January 2016
OPINION The blue skies review into urban planning has now left the runway, with the release by the Productivity Commission before Christmas of an issues paper seeking feedback on possible directions for change.

Takes the Cake | What Dairy Crisis ? #DUD #PropertySpeculation

Updated post – audio links added below
Mon, 21 Mar 2015 at 7:48 p.m.

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WHERE ARE THE PERMANENT JOBS, DUNEDIN

Real estate across the city is suddenly booming for the first time since 2007.

### radionz.co.nz 8:05 am on 18 March 2016
Is Dunedin out of the doldrums?
By Ian Telfer – Otago reporter
Dunedin has been economically stagnant so long that no-one is brave enough to declare the gloomy times over. But all the signs say it is out of the economic doldrums it has been in for 10 years.
The city is enjoying booms in real estate, tourism and niche technology industries such as video gaming. A report from economic monitoring company BERL shows 1770 new jobs have been created in the city in the past two years and Dunedin’s economy is now growing at 1.3 percent a year per capita.
[…] An example of the city’s turnaround is Highland Park in Mosgiel, Dunedin’s first major housing subdivision in many years. Today, 100 tradespeople are on site, building 25 homes.
The subdivision’s developer Syd Brown said they set themselves a decade to sell 225 sections, but the demand is so strong they are two-thirds sold and three years ahead of schedule. “It’s racing ahead for us. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and think ‘is this real?’, but that’s the market at the moment, and the demand is here,” Mr Brown said. Mr Brown said 60 percent of the people buying were from out of town, mainly from Christchurch and other South Island locations, such as Ashburton and Timaru.
Read more

### radionz.co.nz 8:49 am on 18 March 2016
RNZ National – Morning Report
Dunedin out of doldrums for the first time in a decade
8:36 AM. Dunedin’s economy is sailing out of the doldrums for the first time in 10 years.
Audio | Download: Ogg  MP3 (4′13″)

QUESTIONS : What did Syd Brown have to do to convert rural zoned land to residential zoned land ? How did a position on council enable zone changes, new roading and infrastructure services to benefit these properties ?

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[the blurb]

Highland Park is an exciting new community located in the heart of the Taieri and is set to redefine living standards in the Otago region. Seamless integration with Mosgiel’s rich Scottish tradition, Highland Park properties express qualities of modern urban living right on the doorstep of Dunedin city. With a high level of amenities and land and home packages to suit all, Highland Park offers a unique lifestyle defined by openness, green spaces, and a nurtured sense of community.

All section packages are designed to take the hassle and stress out of building a new home. Every section with Highland includes:
• Quality Timber Fences
• Professionally Installed Vehicular Crossings
• Storm Water Discharge Connections
• All Services To The Boundary … Including Fibre
Sections are priced with services as above and with flexible land and home packages available to suit all lifestyles, there has never been a better time to move out to the Taieri.

[click to enlarge]

DCC Webmap – Highland Park, Mosgiel JanFeb 2013

GROAN – #ImpoverishedSubdivisionDesign #UrbanSprawl
Shades of 1940s-style cul de sac living without neighbourhood amenity, includes migration from central Dunedin to flat sections (urban drift). It looks bad, and is. ‘Browning’ the greenfields.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Image: whatifdunedin – Syd Brown + Mosgiel sign

Chris Trotter on National’s “developers’ charter” #RMA reforms

The Never-Ending Suburban Dream: Dr Nick Smith’s purported determination to make housing more affordable by “reforming” the Resource Management Act has been widely derided as little more than a National Party recommitment to the urban development model of the 1950s and 60s. In short, to quote Peter Dunne, “a developers’ charter”.

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### bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz
Friday, 23 January 2015 at 08:53
New Zealand Doesn’t Need A “Developers’ Charter”
By Chris Trotter
THE LAWYERS and the environmental lobbyists are already gnawing at Dr Nick Smith’s proposed changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA). Forewarned by the National-led Government’s first, abortive, foray into environmental law reform back in 2013, a forearmed Opposition has this week re-joined the battle with renewed energy.
The United Future leader, Peter Dunne, has warned against turning the RMA into a “Developers’ Charter” – a potent political riff upon which his parliamentary colleagues have been only-too-happy to extemporise.
Has the Prime Minister, rubbing shoulders with 1 percent of 1 percent of the 1 Percent at Davos, given equal heed to the venerable Member for Ohariu? Given that few politicians’ appreciation of middle-class New Zealanders’ tics and tells is stronger than Mr Dunne’s, if John Key isn’t paying attention to him, then he should – and soon.
Not that, in the brutal numbers game that determines whether a piece of legislation succeeds or fails, Mr Key needs the endorsement of Mr Dunne. The parliamentary arithmetic of environmental law reform requires no complicated figuring. The Act Party’s grace-and-favour MP for Epsom, David Seymour, has already signalled (well in advance of any actual shouts of “Division called for!”) that he will be supplying Dr Smith with the single vote necessary (in addition to National’s 60 votes) to ensure the passage of the Government’s environmental reforms.
Which is, when you think about it, extraordinary. With sixty MPs, National’s current parliamentary caucus is, by historical standards, a large one. It is also slavishly obedient.
[…] It has been a very long time indeed since a National Party politician “crossed the floor” in any kind of procedurally meaningful context. For many years now absolute caucus discipline has not only been assumed – it has prevailed.
Such robotic compliance is not good for the health of National’s caucus; the wider National Party organisation; nor, ultimately, for that of parliamentary democracy itself. Voters need to believe that there are at least some MPs whose definitive allegiance is to values and principles more enduring than the arguments of their Party Whip. On matters crucial to both the social and the natural environments, the practice of representative democracy should rise above the crude calculations of purely partisan arithmetic. It should be about reason and science; about being persuaded by the evidence and securing the greatest good for the greatest number.
Replacing New Zealand’s much admired RMA with a “Developers’ Charter” would be about none of those things.
Read more

█ This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 23 January 2015.

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Related Posts and Comments:
19.1.15 Housing affordability in this country is “just hopeless” –Hugh Pavletich
17.1.15 Ian Athfield dies #architecture
31.12.14 New building laws —happy new year!
9.11.14 Dunedin: Housing upgrade and “rearrangement”
24.10.14 DCC 2GP (district plan): Residential parking + Medium density housing
16.5.14 Dunedin housing
19.3.14 State Housing matters
2.3.14 Dunedin’s social housing need —they built a bastard stadium
12.2.14 DCC: Growth v development contributions
12.6.13 Dunedin housing: building up or Brown-like sprawl #intensification…
30.7.12 National Govt puts champagne and stadium before shelter housing
14.4.12 How perverse is the New Zealand housing market?
8.12.11 interest.co heats NZ housing debate – listen up
13.3.11 Foster on Christchurch rebuild – typical architect… #eqnz
26.12.10 New Zealand housing, a sorry tale

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Images: (top) Hannah Peters/Getty Images AsiaPac – John Key PM and Nick Smith at Hobsonville housing development (August 2014); radiolive.co.nz – Chris Trotter tweaked by whatifdunedin

Dunedin: Housing upgrade and “rearrangement”

Continuing suburban sprawl at Mosgiel and Abbotsford, and new subdivisions in St Clair, Corstorphine and Highcliff, are keeping the builders busy-ish. Is it a boom? Hardly, population increases aren’t driving this, it’s more of a rearrangement and foil to the council’s broader district planning aims. As always, it’s the developers that set the rules while the council languishes. Worst of all, nailing the City Development Team to policy planning and a flimsy ‘doctorate’ (as the council takes pride in playing its isolationist academic cards) isn’t the answer —just another point of remove from the industry boys.
Is it surprising.

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“Land in the more desirable suburbs usually has a house on it and usually the house is just a bit too good to knock down.” –Neil McLeod, DCC building services manager

### ODT Online Sun, 9 Nov 2014
Building boom in city
By Dan Hutchinson – The Star
Dunedin is experiencing the biggest new-house building boom since the beginning of the global financial crisis.
Building activity has boosted the number of people employed in the construction industry to an all-time high of 3590, based on figures provided by Statistics New Zealand.
Read more

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“The Mosgiel East and Taieri East areas are peri-urban areas that until recently were considered rural. Changes to the zoning by the council has seen these areas changed to residential zones for the development of subdivisions.” Ref: University of Otago (Geography) – TLA Approaches: Managing Effects of Rural Subdivision and Development of Peri-urban Lands (2011)

Silver Springs Subdivision, Wingatui Rd, Mosgiel UoO Link (2011)

Gladstone Oaks – Prudence Place Subdivision, Mosgiel RE Listing (2013)

“The expansion of the Mosgiel area has resulted in conflict between those wishing for short term capital gains and those looking towards a longer term gain through the productive use of the land. It has at times been a heated debate with both sides using the ‘Sustainability’ argument to support their views …. One clear fact can be surmised, The loss of high class soil areas to development is highly unlikely to be reversed. The decisions that have made on the Taieri Plains, although made in an attempt to bolster the economic prosperity of the area, have uncertain environmental impacts for the future.” UoO Link

Soil Map of Mosgiel [Source: DCC]

From an earlier comment:

Mosgiel’s future? Tawdry cul-de-sacs, cheek-by-jowl McMansions, high-cost retirement villages and horsy-jodhpur lifestyle blocks. DCC hasn’t got a plan, and it’s too late anyway – the developers with all the control only offer the bad-taste ad hoc.

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Related Posts and Comments:
24.10.14 DCC 2GP (district plan): Residential parking + Medium density housing
24.9.14 Dunedin old boys, councillors & staff collude on 5-star accommodation
16.5.14 Dunedin housing
19.3.14 State Housing matters
2.3.14 Dunedin’s social housing need —they built a bastard stadium
● 12.2.14 DCC: Growth v development contributions
25.10.13 Dunedin: “no-growth city”
20.10.13 Doh, low growth for Dunedin
10.10.13 Whistleblowers’ message heard ??! #OtagoRacingClub… [comments]
18.8.13 South Dunedin and other low lying areas
12.6.13 Dunedin housing: building up or Brown-like sprawl #intensification…
2.4.13 Dunedin: Developers stoop to resource consents instead of private plan…
29.3.13 Reykjavik, Iceland: The strongest mirror [speculative apartments]
21.3.13 Growth fetish ? Urban sprawl v Higher density living ?
3.3.13 RNZ Sunday Morning | Ideas: Re-imagining the Urban House
30.7.12 ORC on hazard risks and land use controls
14.4.12 How perverse is the New Zealand housing market?
8.12.11 interest.co heats NZ housing debate – listen up
25.11.11 South Dunedin and other flood zones
8.11.11 Development contributions
24.9.11 Kevin McCloud interview
27.4.11 What to do, what to do! [CHC #eqnz aside]
24.4.11 Oram on Auckland Spatial Plan, and more
23.3.11 Dunedin City Council’s rock and its hard place
2.2.11 Dunedin building and construction (+DCC fees)
9.1.11 Detroit: “Make no little plans”
29.12 10 Geospatial analysis, relieving burdens on existing infrastructure
28.12.10 ‘Light urbanism’ – planners influencing residential design
26.12.10 New Zealand housing, a sorry tale
24.10.10 Otara Simple House
27.9.10 Cities: Wellington, or Dunedin?
13.9.10 Same again, Dunedin City District Plan about to be ignored
15.8.10 WILD about Wanaka

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Growth fetish ? Urban sprawl v Higher density living ?

### onenesspublishing.com March 20, 2013
Urban sprawl isn’t to blame: unsustainable cities are the product of growth fetish
By Brendan Gleeson
In a recent article on The Conversation Robert Nelson argues we are all morally culpable for unsustainable urban sprawl. He goes on to suggest we fix this by taking advantage of opportunities for higher density development in sparsely populated inner suburbs. But his argument is based on a false opposition: mounting evidence shows that high density development in inner areas performs very poorly in terms of resource consumption and greenhouse emissions. The idea that outer suburbs are inherently less sustainable than inner ones doesn’t bear scrutiny. The key question is not where we accommodate growth; it’s our slavish pursuit of growth itself.
Read more

● Brendan Gleeson is Professor in Urban Policy Studies at University of Melbourne.

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The Conversation hosts in-depth analysis, research, news and ideas from leading academics and researchers.

Read two articles by Robert Nelson at The Conversation:

The grass isn’t greener in the outer ‘burbs (7 March 2013, 6.43am AEST)
“For a long a time real estate close to the palace was socially desirable, and anyone with aspirations didn’t want to know about the rest. Today in Melbourne inner-city people are embarrassed to reveal knowledge of the outer suburbs such as South Morang, like 17th century Parisians who would mispronounce the street-names of poorer areas or affect not to know them at all. Throughout history, the distribution of wealth has had a geographical expression. Snobbery, however, is only part of the challenge of urban geography. Power and privilege are concentrated within 10kms of the city centre.”

The devaluing dream; why Australian suburbia is an economic disaster (11 January 2012, 6.22am AEST)
“In spite of what everyone believes through natural pride and vanity, the family house is an asset that depreciates. Don’t be deceived that the value of property goes up and up, which of course it does. The rising prices are caused by the land becoming more expensive, not the house itself.”

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Image: shutterstock.com – urban expansion

Inanity of property development and consumer demand at scale – less than subtle reminder to DCC, we HATE sprawl

### boston.com September 30, 2010
The Big Picture: News Stories in Pictures
Human landscapes in SW Florida
By Alan Taylor
Boom and bust residential development has drastically affected parts of southwest Florida for decades now, and I spent some time (with the help of Google Earth), looking around the area. With permission from the fine folks at Google, here are a few glimpses at development in southwest Florida.
Link + Comments (26 photos total)

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### distractedscientist.wordpress.com October 16, 2010
By distractedscientist
Why primary school children shouldn’t do town planning.
It seems that fairly large tracts of Florida make for some amazing art, but it’s not town planning. More like doodling with patterns, and being, ‘Oh, that could be be a town layout’.
Read more

█ Other photos

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Links via @ajamesgreen

WILD about Wanaka

### ODT Online Sat, 14 Aug 2010
Developments dismay landscape architect
By Matthew Haggart
As residential subdivisions in Wanaka continue to expand the town’s boundaries, the approach of some developers has saddened the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s top landscape consultant. Dr Marion Read, the chief landscape architect at QLDC’s regulatory authority Lake Environmental, says major earthworks associated with some Wanaka developments are destroying parts of the landscape’s most distinctive features.
Read more

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### ODT Online Sat, 14/08/2010 – 10:14pm.
Comment by qksmith on Landscape Issues
While I am the first to be critical of landscape issues in the district, I think we have to accept that where land is zoned for LDR that we are dealing with a highly modified environment.
Read more

LDR = Low Density Residential

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Don’t mind my aportioning blame, rightly or wrongly it’s a considered opinion…more like a bad reaction. Of course, Dunedin isn’t free of sprawl at the hands of some people active in Wanaka.

### ODT Online Sun, 15/08/2010 – 6:52pm.
Comment by ej kerr on Wanaka is sprawl

Being an experienced planner or not is hardly relevant when the adverse cumulative effects of house building are totalled for the Wanaka district landscape.

I fully support the comments, as reported, of Dr Marion Read.

My most recent visit to Wanaka two days ago has again reinforced how inadequate the local district plan is to counter unwarranted housing sprawl.

Half the battle might be with the drive of property owners to create (uncritically) an acontextual, uncompromising slice of suburbia in the extraordinarily picturesque, wild and weathered countryside.

Developers of the subdivisions (a small group of influential citizens whom we know by name), like the property owners, are equally uncritical of the environmental impacts of the sprawl they foster, and derive their not inconsiderable profits from.

This hedonistic activity – speculative building – which does not spring from best practice in landscape architecture, architecture (by registered architects), or sustainable environmental design – is supported (‘controlled’) by an ineffectually dull, unresponsive fabric of arbitrary local authority ‘planning’ decisions (zone rules) constraining the use of colour, gables, materials, height plane angles, non reflective surfaces, bulk and location, density et al.

The result is an impoverished sameness, an unspeakably heavy dreariness in the now over-built environment. An eyesore almost without end that submerges/denies the incredible three-dimensional topographical variances of the natural landscape. It might be expensive, it might be what the market demands, it might be what the bulldozer invites, but this is dumbed down contemporary building development at its illogical worst.

The full battle most probably rests with ‘regional planning’ education and professional practice development in New Zealand that is rather too dependent on quasi-legal/legal experiment with the RMA clause and bland generalities of rural zoning – without mandatory professionally accredited multi-disciplinary training in contextual design processes and environmental sustainability.

The collective forces suburbanising Wanaka should be halted. This is not sustainable.

A moratorium, a re-think. District intelligence must be raised for the stewardship and protection of landscape values, inviting informed sympathetic design responses for the making of comfortable ‘dwelling place’…there should be no need for hackles and loss of hair with each visit to Wanaka.

This is a district for smart design, not stuffy inert planning that expects less of the development community than it has to give.

Elizabeth Kerr, Dunedin

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Post by Elizabeth Kerr