Water quality in stakeholder consultation II: facilitated review of policies and rules for a regional plan

This paper describes further progress in a new approach to stakeholder consultation for policies about agricultural land uses and water quality in rural waterways; a process that was begun early in 2012. The initial consultation events provided the basis for a future draft of Greater Wellington Regional Council’s regional plan. As the next step in the consultation process, a workshop was held in late 2012 to which a range of stakeholders were invited. At the workshop, stakeholders considered ways to resolve possible conflicts in the possible policies and rules, and they suggested ways that the policies could be improved. In general, the participants supported the overall direction of the policies and rules and they had ideas about how they could be made more practical for landowners. Participants encouraged Greater Wellington Regional Council to work with primary industry organisations to encourage the use of preferred management practices through voluntary methods. Consistency and fairness was very important to the workshop participants and they did not want the policies to make exceptions for particular groups of landowners. The more exceptions to the general rules that were suggested the more that other participants wanted greater monitoring and enforcement by the Regional Council so that environmental bottom lines were still going to be protected.