Auckland Council Stormwater Network Discharge Consent Framework

The Auckland Council is required to obtain resource consents for stormwater discharges from the region’s stormwater networks. These are referred to in the Proposed Auckland Regional Plan: Air, Land and Water (ALW Plan) as network discharge consents (NDCs). In the past NDCs were applied for by the legacy territorial authorities primarily based on drainage catchments although some councils, including Auckland and North Shore Cities, sought to obtain discharge consents on a city-wide, whole-of-network basis. With the establishment of the Auckland Council as a Unitary Authority over the Auckland region, the Council’s Stormwater Unit is developing a framework that provides an overarching approach for progressing NDCs under the new Council. Core to this framework is greater focus on regional outcomes and priorities including obtaining NDCs on the basis of 10 “Consolidated Receiving Environments”, which are large coastal water bodies (e.g. the Waitemata and Manukau Harbours) and their contributing sub-catchments. This approach assists in managing major water bodies on a holistic basis and enables better prioritisation of stormwater management effort to give effect to some of the benefits enabled by an amalgamated Council. The framework also considers the role of the future Unitary Plan in managing stormwater alongside NDCs and in particular the use of regional (RMA s30) land use provisions to achieve more integrated land use/ stormwater discharge outcomes.