Development pressure on Dunedin coastal areas

Publication:Otago Daily Times; Date:Mar 9, 2006; Section:DUNEDIN; Page Number:5

Development pressure on Dunedin coastal areas

• Council to review management

By David Loughrey and NZPA

Dunedin coastal areas are feeling the strain of the type of development pressure that has prompted a government review, the Otago branch of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust says.

The Government is not alone in looking into the issue. The Dunedin City Council is also reviewing its landscape management rules, which include coastal areas.

Conservation Minister Chris Carter has ordered a review of the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement, the day after he vetoed a $10 million marina in Whangamata, on the Coromandel Peninsula.

His decision overturned an Environment Court ruling that cost applicants about $1 million and has taken 12 years to reach a conclusion.

“The Environment Court got it wrong,” he said.

Federated Farmers has suggested the review go further and include the Resource Management Act.

Mr Carter said coastal communities around New Zealand were worried about the pace of change.

“Ultimately, I want New Zealanders to decide how we develop our coastline.

“This is about what people want in the end. More and more pressure is coming on the coastline. We need to give better guidance to local government.

Mr Carter said he would appoint a panel to travel the country finding out what was going on and what people felt about it.

DCC environmental monitoring planner Michael Bathgate said a landscape architect would be contracted soon to review landscape management areas in Dunedin.

Those areas included coastal and other land, and had rules that controlled building activity, ensuring development was sympathetic to the character of an area.

Any change would “not so much be a change of area, but a change of description and values”.

In Dunedin, some coastal areas were also protected by the 15ha rule, which sets the minimum size of subdivided land in rural areas.

Feedback during a review last year expressed concern about coastal development, Mr Bathgate said.

The concerns were nationwide, and Dunedin was not immune, he said.

Options were still being investigated, and he did not want to speculate on what could result, but he hoped changes would be publicly notified later this year.

Historic Places Trust Otago branch committee chairwoman Elizabeth Kerr said she would attend a meeting today to discuss the issue.

The branch would be submitting to the council on development, both on the coast and inland.

Ms Kerr said subdivision was an issue where there were no good design guidelines in sensitive landscape areas.

That would include the peninsula, but also coastal bays where there were already communities of small cribs and houses.

“In the north, those have been lost.”

There seemed to be an increasing interest in Dunedin coastal areas from developers who had been previously working in Central Otago, “leaving us unprepared”. That pressure meant district plan changes were necessary.

Federated Farmers national board member Bruce McNab, of North Otago, called for a review of the Resource Management Act (RMA).

“It is time for a fundamental review of the RMA — not the limited review on coastal development rules,” ,” he said.

The review must remove the Department of Conservation’s (Doc’s) ability to advocate for conservation controls on private land, using the RMA, he said.

Chris Carter