Values of protected wetlands in the Taranaki Region Other Publication
- Author
- Taranaki Regional Council
- Year
- 1997
- Publisher / Organisation
- Taranaki Regional Council
- Summary
- The Regional Coastal Plan for Taranaki (RCP), made operative in 1997, has one overriding purpose: 'to promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources in relation to the coastal marine area of Taranaki'. It is appropriate and necessary for people's wellbeing and the economic viability of the region, that a number of activities are undertaken in the coastal marine area, as long as the effects of such activities are well managed. The RCP provides the management framework, objectives, policies and rules to govern a number of activities in the coastal marine area that would otherwise be restricted under the Resource Management Act (RMA). The Council is required under section 35 (2A) of the RMA report on the effectiveness and efficiency of policies, rules and other methods in its plans. This involves looking back at how the RCP has measured up. Such assessment is not only required by legislation, but is good planning practice as part of the review of the plan. This assessment was based on feedback from stakeholders, data from consents and incidents databases, monitoring reports, state of environment monitoring and annual significant activity reports. Evaluating the effectiveness of the RCP was undertaken by first examining the outputs of the plan (consents issued, consent monitoring, unauthorised incidents and non-regulatory methods undertaken). This found that the number of current coastal consents is relatively low (just over 250) and an average of 24 consents per year have been issued, varied or renewed since the RCP was made operative with most of these processed on a non-notified basis. The majority of consents are for the open coast management area (62%) and for coastal protection structures (42%). Eighty percent of consents are processed as either discretionary or restricted discretionary activities. Monitoring of compliance with consent conditions has found good to high levels of environmental performance. Coastal related unauthorised incidents make up only a small proportion of the total number that the Council responds to. Over the last eight years the Council has responded to 219 coastal incidents, an average of 27 per year. The most frequent unauthorised incidents have an unknown origin and include a number of natural events with the next most frequent incident being from dairy processing. Evaluating the effectiveness of the RCP in achieving anticipated environmental outcomes has concluded that:
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