News

GPF Happenings

Glasson Potts Fowler’s idea for a way to reuse stormwater from the Awarua plant has seen Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd win the corporate division of Environment Southland’s recent annual awards. While previously stormwater was treated and discharged into a stream, the new environmental initiative has seen the untreated water being diverted initially to a storage pond with subsequent reuse in the production of superphosphate.

Ballance’s newsletter takes up the story….

“ Over the past six months, Teamtalk has followed the progress of the building and commissioning of Awarua’s storm water drains. Now, this significant environmental initiative has seen Ballance win corporate division of Southlands’ tenth annual environment awards.

The Environment Southland awards acknowledge groups or individuals running innovative environmental projects or limiting the impact their industry has on the environment. It was the first time Ballance had entered the awards.

Operations Manager Neil Miller said winning the award was a notable achievement, especially as the company is only two years into a 10 year environment improvement plan. Around 200 people attended the awards function, held at Invercargill’s Ascot Park Hotel. “It was an excellent night,” said Neil, “and our staff who attended really enjoyed it. We got off to a good start when the Ballance Farm Environment Awards got a mention by the Chairman of Environment Southland, and then when we won our section it just got better.”

Though the award was specifically for the storm water project, Neil is quick to point out that this is only part of the excellent work that has been done by the staff at Awarua over the past three years. “Everyone here has made a huge effort to lift our environmental performance, and that has been supported by management and by our external contractors Glasson Potts Fowler, who are our resource management consultants, and Fulton Hogan Southland, who are the principal contractors. “We see ourselves as being on an environmental road and we are going to keep moving forward down this path. Just because we have won an award for one project it doesn’t mean we are going to stop”.

Rob Potts, Glasson Potts Fowler’s key point of contact for the project says that for Ballance Awarua this is only the beginning, with acid neutralisation being the next step in the stormwater treatment process. Watch this space!

GPF has been assisting Port Nelson Limited to prepare a variation to the Nelson Resource Management Plan. The recommended approach, prepared after considerable community consultation and in depth studies and research, was presented to and ratified by the Nelson City Council on 08 February 2005. This was a significant milestone in the timetable required by the Environment Court to provide a means for managing noise produced by Port operations.

GPF has been recently commissioned to undertake a large scale subdivision at West Melton, outside Christchurch, involving approximately 300 sections. The work involves consideration of the servicing requirements of the existing settlement as well as the new land. Considerable planning and urban design has been incorporated into the project which will run for the next two years.

GPF is now working on numerous references which were lodged to the Environment Court in relation to the decisions on the Proposed Selwyn District Plan. Many of the issues involve peri-urban subdivision and subdivision around rural settlements. Significant areas of land are

involved which will enable the continued growth of the greater Christchurch area.

surveying projects

The fundamental requirement before many surveying projects can proceed, is the requirement to obtain the necessary resource consents. Our licenced surveyors have the required expertise to canvas the issues of district plans, and to obtain the required consents. While a significant number of the district councils have advanced the planning processes to a point that the Proposed District Plans are deemed to be operative, an understanding of the weighting to be given to Transitional District Plans is essential. While the processes may be time consuming, the outcomes are beneficial to our clients where consents are obtained ahead of the otherwise anticipated time frames.

Once consents are obtained, our surveyors undertake the field work with the appropriate degree of technology, whether is be Robotic theodolites or GPS receivers, towards the process of issue of new titles or the erection of buildings.

Industry Comment

NRRP

The biggest news on the block is the Environment Canterbury Proposed Natural Resources Regional Plan. This was notified on 3rd July 2004 and is having a noticeable effect on the number of consents required and thus the time for processing of consents.

Water Allocation

As part of the NRRP, Canterbury’s groundwater resources have been broken down into a number of zones. A number of these have been calculated to be over allocated (“Red Zones”) and thus no more water available. However, since the initial notification, some of the zones have undergone a more robust assessment and have been reclassified “yellow” (near the limit) or “white”. But a number remain red.

This classification system has resulted in many takes being notified and proceeding to hearings. It has been a huge wake-up call to all – the water resources beneath us are not unlimited.

Effects on Neighbours Wells

In the past, the modelling of drawdown from a proposed abstraction, quite often resulted in numerous neighbour’s sign-off in order to gain consent. Under the new method in the NRRP, the number of potentially affected wells appears to be more realistic, however, it is early days and not all scenarios have yet been tested.

Water Quality - Stormwater

The NRRP has numerous Policies and Rules regarding stormwater. These have stalled a number of developments already underway as consents are now most likely to be required for most developments. Most of the hold ups are over interpretation of rules in the new plan.

The plan gives direction for stormwater treatment and disposal, with the key being to use shallow grass swale type systems where maintenance requirements are visible. However, these are not always easy to incorporate into every subdivision and the odd development is now having to lose a section for stormwater attenuation and infiltration ponds.

Water Quality - Wastewater

There is now no minimum size for a site to have a septic tank system (on-site), however, to meet the conditions to keep plumes within the boundary, a minimum of about 0.75 ha is required. In addition on-site systems now require at least 6 m to groundwater to be permitted activities.