Hans van der Wal: Super City will have no watchdog on environment issues

It is often far cheaper to pipe a creek than to bridge it. Photo / Martin Sykes

Aucklanders may have to get used to seeing the Super City council get its own way on resource management issues.

Creating the Auckland council may well solve a number of problems, but it raises a potentially far bigger question - who is going to keep this megalith in check from a resource management perspective?

Is the new Auckland council going to prosecute itself for causing environmental harm? Is it going to take itself to the Environment Court to protect the interests of the environment?

This council will need to apply to itself for all resource consents.

What happens if it does not like the result - will it appeal its own decision?

The problem stems from the fact that the majority of district and city councils' budgets and efforts are aimed at operational activities like building and maintaining roads, getting rid of rubbish, providing community facilities, and so on.

If they could do this without having to worry about the environmental consequences they could save a lot of money.

Keeping sewage out of harbours or building roads without ruining creeks they have to cross is a costly business.

It is often far cheaper to pipe a creek than to bridge it - or to allow sewage to overflow straight to the harbour rather than build extra retention or treatment capacity.

One of the Auckland Regional Council's key roles has been to make sure such environmental short cuts are not taken.

It has been able to do so because of the powers the RMA has given it to ensure everyone - councils included - first gets a permit with conditions designed to limit environmental harm.

A city council that thinks it is above the law and can cut corners environmentally to save effort and costs can expect enforcement action from the regional council.

All too often the regional council has been called on to make sure a city or district's roading or sewage departments clean up illegal messes they have caused when building or operating their networks or roads.

The ARC is the environmental watchdog and consent authority for things as widely ranging as bridges over rivers and creeks, boat ramps, jetties, stormwater, air pollution and groundwater.

Councils dealing with any of these areas know that the ARC is watching them to make sure they do so without environmental harm.

The RMA's clear distinction between the roles of a regional and a district or city council has had other benefits as well, including on regional planning issues, of which the Long Bay-Okura rezoning is just one example.

The North Shore City Council initially tried to rezone most of the land between Long Bay and Okura as residential.

Thanks to the intervention by the Auckland Regional Council the urban boundaries have been contained and significant areas of green space have been retained south of Okura.

The new Auckland Council will need to apply to itself for all resource consents.

Of course, councillors will not be able to sit on resource consent applications by the council to the council - that will require the appointment of independent hearing commissioners, who do not come cheap.

It will take a council planning officer with a brave disregard of future career prospects to recommend that a high-profile council project be refused resource consent.

One might respond that the Auckland City Council, and indeed all the other city and district councils, have had to apply to themselves for consents for decades.

That may well be so, but this has only been limited to town planning-type issues associated with land use and has not extended to key environmental issues such as water and air pollution or the protection of rivers, coasts and harbours. Those have been the domain of the ARC.

The old adage of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (Who watches the watchers?) has an appropriate ring.

Unless the Government can create a powerful Environmental Protection Agency with powers far beyond its currently proposed role - to step in and fill the huge gap that will be left by the ARC - Aucklanders may have get used to seeing the council get its own way, whatever the environmental cost.

* Hans van der Wal is an environmental law specialist with Duncan Cotterill. He has worked in enforcement and resource consent roles in a city and regional council in the Auckland Region.