Media Release

New direction for Bay of Plenty resource management

9 October 2014

Bay of Plenty Regional Councillors celebrated the adoption of the new operative Bay of Plenty Regional Policy Statement (RPS) during their full council meeting in Rotorua today. The RPS became operative on 1 October.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council Chairman Doug Leeder said that the RPS provides leadership and direction on how land, air and water should be managed in the Bay of Plenty for the next ten to fifteen years.

“We all want clean air, lakes we can swim in, sea we can gather kaimoana from. We all rely on the environment for our social and economic well-being, so we need to ensure that our use of natural resources is sustainable in the long-term.”

"The RPS provides a framework to do that. It’s the highest level resource management planning instrument for the Bay of Plenty. It gives direction to all other plans and consent decisions by regional, district and city councils in the region,” he said.

Chairman Leeder said that making the RPS operative was a significant milestone that had been six years in the making.

“It takes time to work through the public and statutory processes that are needed to create a robust, durable policy statement. Our last RPS was made operative in 1999 and a lot has changed since then.”

“Thanks to the hard work of staff, submitters, and councillors past and present, we now have an operative RPS that takes account of current knowledge as well as iwi and community aspirations. It provides for the best possible balance between use and protection of the region’s resources and will serve us well through the coming decade,” Chairman Leeder said.

The Resource Management Act 1991 requires regional councils to prepare a regional policy statement.

The Bay of Plenty RPS highlights regionally significant issues with land, air, fresh and coastal water, infrastructure and biodiversity, including issues of significance to iwi. It includes objectives which set out what needs to be achieved to address those issues. It also contains policies and methods which describe how the objectives will be achieved.

The newly operative RPS can be viewed at www.boprc.govt.nz/rps. It includes policies on:

• The effects of land use activities on waterways

• Iwi resource management

• Reducing air pollution

• Regional water allocation

• Protection of natural, wildlife, landscape and historic heritage

• Providing for urban growth

• Sustainable rural production activities

• Access to geothermal features and resources

ENDS

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