Let’s Do the NPS Dance - Integrating the New Stormwater Requirements

This paper discusses the combined stormwater planning implications of the national freshwater, coastal and development policy requirements in the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management 2014 (NPS-FM), the NPS on Urban Development Capacity 2016 (NPS-UDC) and the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 (NZCPS). It also considers the potential NPS on Natural Hazards (NPS-NH).

The RMA requires national policy statements such as these to be implemented by territorial authorities as part of their business-as-usual practices.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s 2015 report on coastal hazards adds the essential climate change context to this discussion.

Key questions that the genesis of this paper was based upon are:

 How can this be effectively done?

 What are, or should be, the goals of implementing these policy statements?

The authors propose that the best way to achieve an integrated approach to implementation of these policy documents is to deal with stormwater under three inter-related headings:

 Quantity — flood management, plan zones and rules, freeboard and modelling;

 Quality — stream health, ecosystem services, values and limits; and

 Community — interaction, recreation, amenity, health and linkages.

Integrating the requirements of the national policy statements under these three headings will enable councils to achieve more optimum outcomes than considering the individual documents separately.