In 2010 Hastings District Council obtained comprehensive discharge consents for the several hundred individual urban stormwater catchments that discharge to eighteen surface water receiving environments. Since that time Council has been on a journey of improving stormwater management, involving significant expenditure. This is continuing with initial catchment management plans due to be completed in 2015 for the Hastings urban area discharges.
Some key areas of this journey include:
- Collaborative relationship building between the District and Regional Council
technical and compliance staff.
- Resolving the responsibility for investigations and improvements within the “grey
area” between the important receiving environments and constructed or highly modified
open drainage channels or streams.
- Investment in investigations through monitoring of watercourses (sediment, water
quality, macro-invertebrates).
- Determining the value of this data for understanding issues, environment,
improvement needs and making decisions for a management approach.
- Working through an adaptive consent process to make consent conditions more
workable and allow compliance to be demonstrated.
- Determining appropriate development controls and mitigation measures in
provincial urban areas with smaller scale developments.
- Developing a plan for the following years and expected outcomes.
This paper provides details of the journey so far that Hastings District Council has been
undertaking, including lessons learnt along the way.