Latest news with #LloydMcCall
Scoop
25-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
New $2m Large-Scale Environmental Fund Endorsed By ORC
ORC councillors yesterday gave the green light for staff to progress a proposed $2 million large scale environmental fund. Councillor and co-chair of the environmental delivery committee, Kate Wilson, welcomed the decision, saying the community had shown that large scale catchment wide approach was the most effective delivery model. 'It had been well supported through consultation and provided for intergenerational impact, collaboration and also aligns with organisational strategic direction to support environmental outcomes,' she says. The delivery committee's other co-chair and Councillor, Lloyd McCall, says the ability for ORC to be able to support and enable community led environmental action at scale is an excellent opportunity. 'There is already significant investment that the community are contributing to environmental outcomes and to be able to support more of this to happen on the ground is vital to enhance what we have for future generations,' Mr McCall says. At a full Council meeting in Dunedin yesterday, Councillors unanimously endorsed the proposal for staff to progress implementation of the prioritised funding model. The $2 million per-year fund will initially be funded from Council reserves and comes into effect from 1 July 2025. The new fund is separate from the ORC's annual ECO Fund. Manager Environmental Implementation, Libby Caldwell says on collaboration across the system, ORC will take a leadership role of the funding system, but local leadership and action will be driven by communities to achieve sustained environmental outcomes. In considering ORC alignment to organisational strategy and strategic direction, Mrs Caldwell says that covers 'knowing that the right investment decisions are being made in the right place at the right time to support ORC's strategic directions and the goals set by Council'. Through the annual plan process the decision was also made in the Council meeting yesterday to proceed with funding this programme of work.
Otago Daily Times
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Fears waterways at risk from wastewater plans
A government plan for national wastewater disposal standards is being met with local concern it could harm waterways. The plan, proposed in a Water Services Authority — Taumata Arowai consultation that ended yesterday, could end regional councils' ability to issue disposal consents with higher standards that are considerate of local environmental impacts. An official response from the Otago Regional Council is expected to flag that the plan risks a "one-size-fits-all approach". A draft response from the Dunedin City Council, which has been given an extension to May 1 to respond, has expressed concern that resource management instruments, prepared with mana whenua and communities, would be "over-ridden" and result in a "more permissive" approach to discharges to water rather than land. There needed to be a "backstop" opportunity for community engagement, it said. The Environmental Law Initiative (ELI), a charity run by environmental lawyers, said the proposed standards risked further decades of sub-standard wastewater disposal to water bodies. The charity flagged the Local Government (Water Services) Bill, which is progressing concurrent to the development of the standards, would give the power to set the standards to ministers rather than Taumata Arowai. ELI legal adviser Reto Blattner de-Vries described the proposed changes as having "massive implications" that would "entrench" lower-cost wastewater treatment plants that would be given 35-year consents. The changes would "allow councils to put their hands up and absolve themselves from pursuing culturally-appropriate discharge solutions which differ from the status quo, such as changing a discharge to water to a land-based discharge." Councils would not be able to decline an application for a discharge consent for a wastewater treatment plant that met the standards even if it contributed to various adverse effects listed in s107 of the Resource Management Act, he said. "A proposal of this gravity should be highlighted more by government ... The proposals take away localised discretion by councils which will mean councils won't have incentives to work with communities to find local solutions." ORC deputy chairman Cr Lloyd McCall said the ORC had submitted a comprehensive submission on the proposed wastewater standards and councillors had been given opportunity to input. The submission had, overall, supported a drive for efficiency in dealing with wastewater, but also outlined concerns around the protection of coastal and freshwater environments. "A proposed definition of pristine in its current form would not protect our highly valued lakes and their tributaries from degradation. The submission highlights this unintended consequence of a one-size-fits-all approach to water quality expectations." He said there was a need for rationalisation of wastewater management and regulation and it was also "essential that there is the ability for significant local community input into the receiving environment's water quality visions and outcomes." Cr Alan Somerville said: "The whole drive is to come up with standardised solutions that don't take into account environmental conditions and community aspirations for environmental protection. "This doesn't allow for particular local circumstances." He called for consideration of disposal to land, as a more mana whenua culturally appropriate response, and an end to an acceptance that wastewater could be dumped in the ocean without treatment if there was an overflow situation. The DCC has four resource consents that allow it to discharge wastewater overflows to freshwater and the ocean. Overflows can occur when wastewater pipes get inundated with stormwater. In South Dunedin, overflows have been channelled down a pipe called the "contamination vector" leading into the harbour and have sometimes flowed out on to Surrey St. Cr Andrew Noone said the government needed to now "set the bar high enough to ensure it was environmentally sustainable and doesn't cause greater degradation than we have currently got".
