My Account
The reclassification of entire harbours as wetlands will have profound impacts for permitted activities within these waterways in future.
Any new coastal structure such as a boat ramp, jetty or oyster farm will need a consent under two sets of requirements. Small-scale earthworks such as river mouth clearing, that involve disturbing the foreshore and seabed, will require resource consent when they are currently permitted activities.
Reclamation of any wetland in the Coastal Marine Area (CMA) is now prohibited unless it is for infrastructure.
Activities such as mangrove seedling removal, which was a permitted activity under the Auckland Unitary Plan, will be more tightly controlled and require a resource consent.
Council’s senior policy planner, Kath Coombes says this is because the High Court has determined that central government’s National Environmental Standards for Freshwater (NES-F) provisions relating to natural wetlands apply in the CMA.
However, Coombes says that as Council has existing policies to support mangrove seedling removal, it is looking at how it could simplify the consenting process.
“Activities such as vegetation clearance, earthworks or land disturbance, damming or discharging water, and erecting coastal structures such as a boat ramp, jetty or oyster farm, most of which already needed consent under the Unitary Plan, may now need consents under the NES-F as well,” Coombes says.
Currently councils up and down the country are seeking to interpret the NES-F, as laid down by central government. The bone of contention is in defining what constitutes a natural wetland in the coastal marine area.
The Ministry for the Environment has undertaken consultation on proposed changes to the NES-F in relation to natural wetlands and these changes are expected to be gazetted soon.
In the interim, Council has defined coastal wetlands as anywhere in the sea with vegetation (mangroves, saltmarsh, rushes and herb field), mudflats and estuaries. This definition encompasses entire harbours, which are classed as estuaries.
In general, the activities that will be affected are:
• Vegetation clearance within, or within a 10 metre setback from, a natural wetland
• Earthworks or land disturbance within, or within a 10 metre setback from, a natural wetland
• The taking, use, damming, diversion, or discharge of water within, or within a 100 metre setback from, a natural wetland.
Several councils have contacted the Minister for the Environment about the uncertainty in where the wetland regulations apply on the coast. The councils would prefer that the new NES-F only applied to freshwater wetlands and not to the coast. Activities in coastal wetlands are already regulated under regional coastal plans (which is part of the Unitary Plan in Auckland).
The confusion was highlighted when the Northland Regional Council sought a judgement from the Environment Court on whether the natural wetland provisions of the NES-F applied to the Coastal Marine Area. The court determined that they applied only to the area between the river mouth and the upstream limit of the CMA.
However, this was overturned on appeal in the High Court, which determined that a natural wetland could be anywhere in the CMA and that the NES-F natural wetlands provisions applied to all natural wetlands in the CMA.
