Christchurch-West Melton Zone Committee meeting

The Christchurch-West Melton Zone Committee will meet for the first time this year at 6pm on 26 January at the Linwood Service Centre.

At the meeting the committee will appoint a chair, deputy chair, and a representative to sit on the Regional Committee.

The committee will also receive presentations on the Water Supply Strategy and the Surface Water Strategy from Christchurch City Council representatives.

Following this, the committee will receive a presentation from the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) about the Recovery Strategy.

The committee will finish the meeting by hearing from committee member Herena Stone about local Rūnanga and water management before discussing priority areas for Immediate Steps biodiversity funding.

The zone committee is responsible for the local implementation of the Immediate Steps Biodiversity programme. Immediate Steps is a $10 million programme for biodiversity to help protect endangered species and waahi taonga (sacred sites).

It also covers maintenance of Canterbury’s braided rivers, providing habitat for native flora and fauna, as well as protecting wetlands and other ecosystems.

Formed in October 2011, the Christchurch-West Melton Zone Committee was the final of ten zone committees to be formed under the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS).

The role of the committee is to make consensus based decisions about water management in the zone. The committee meets each month to learn about the water resource in the zone and engage with community members to get their feedback.

The end goal of the committee is to develop a set of water management recommendations that will be submitted to councils in the form of a Zone Implementation Programme (ZIP).

The zone committee operates as a joint committee of Environment Canterbury, Christchurch City Council and the Selwyn District Council. It features six community members as well as three Rūnanga representatives and three from councils.

The community members are; Ann Winstanley, Deidre Francis, Hugh Thorpe, Ian Fox, Jon Harding, and Robert Wynn-Williams. The Rūnanga appointees are; Herena Stone (Rāpaki), Arapata Reuben (Tūāhuriri) and Craig Pauling (Taumutu). The three council representatives are; Environment Canterbury Commissioner Rex Williams, Selwyn District Councillor Debra Hasson and Christchurch City Councillor Sally Buck.

Read the agenda (643 kB)