No time to take in the view on Waterview

by David Clendon

Things are not looking good for the Environmental Protection Authority. We supported the bill that will properly create the agency but with considerable reservations, and already it is clear that community groups wanting to participate in EPA processes are being hamstrung by the impossibly short time frames allowed to submitters.

Here’s a bit of a process time frame for the Waterview Connection, a massive project that will have equally massive long term consequences for the local environment and communities.

Local people found out on 18 September that they had 20 working days to put in a submission to the project, 20 days to trawl through many volumes of often highly technical data, and respond to no fewer than 53 separate resource consent applications.

The umbrella group representing local interests managed that significant hurdle, and are now obliged to present their expert evidence to the Board of enquiry no later than 17 December.

Expert evidence, as the name suggests, requires input from people whose expertise might include planning, engineering, noise, air quality, social impact assessment, none of which comes cheaply.

The Waterview community group has applied for funding from the Environmental Legal Assistance Fund, but because the application and approval time lines for that process are typically (at least) some 4 -6 weeks, they are most unlikely to have that funding secured before the December 17 deadline, and certainly not in time to allow any professionals they contract sufficient time to do the necessary work.

From this we can fairly deduce that the much vaunted ‘streamlining’ sought by the Minister Nick Smith is short hand for setting up processes that make it damn near impossible for  legitimate community concerns to be properly represented, and  that is just not good enough. It is contrary to best practice in RMA processes, and the key principles of environmental protection and public participation.

Their time lines need to be extended to allow fair and proper process, and the EPA’s refusal to do so reeks of political interference with what is supposed to be an independent body.