ORC strengthens process to deal with consent breaches

The Otago Regional Council (ORC) has firmed up its processes for dealing with persistent breaches of resource consent conditions.

ORC director resource management Selva Selvarajah said there has been a history of non-compliance with consent conditions in the region by a wide range of consent holders covering both major and minor categories of breach.

Compliance committee chairman Cr Doug Brown said that after becoming concerned at the incidence of breaches, committee members asked staff to produce a report outlining proposals to reduce non-compliance.

"Compliance with consent conditions is important to avoid environmental incidents and plays a major part in managing the region's resources," Cr Brown said.

Dr Selvarajah said staff had come up with a process which was "fair, firm, and pragmatic" and was aimed at producing good environmental outcomes.

Once consents are granted most require performance monitoring, auditing, or both.

Performance monitoring checks that consent holders have provided correct data, environmental information or resource management plans as required in their consents.

Auditing checks that consent holders are complying with all conditions on their resource consent. Examples include making sure effluent discharge conditions are being met, or that the stipulated amount of water is being taken from a river.

Audit monitoring involves a site inspection, sampling where necessary, assessment of consent holder technical reports, and a discussion of the consent requirements with the holder.

Dr Selvarajah said that in recent years there had been a large number of minor breaches, and a relatively small number of major breaches.

In the past, warning or follow-up letters had been sent to the consent holders concerned, and in some cases this had resulted in direct discussions between compliance staff and the consent holders.

However, despite this effort the trend of non-compliance had continued and it was time to firm up the process, Dr Selvarajah said.

Cr Brown said that given the history of ongoing non-compliance, the proposed process would use enforcement options such as infringement notices, abatement notices, enforcement orders or prosecutions delivered within clear timeframes to improve compliance.

However, before any of these sanctions were employed, consent holders would be given an opportunity to bring their compliance up to date. Enforcement options would be selected on the basis of risks to the environment and repeat breaches.

Dr Selvarajah said this was especially true in the case of non-compliance in performance monitoring where breaches mainly involved a lack of timely input of information or data.

In these instances infringement notices would be served, but prosecution was unlikely unless there were several breaches in a row.

Serious breaches could result in prosecution preceded by a warning or infringement notice.