22 March 2018World Water DayO ngā taonga katoa o te whenua, ko te wai te mea tino ohooho o ngā mea katoa. Today is World Water Day and this year's theme is ‘Nature for Water’ – exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century. Planting waterway margins, steep slopes, and restoring wetlands are just some of the nature-based solutions we’re working on with landowners to help protect and improve the health of our waterways, wildlife, local communities and their livelihoods. Follow us on Facebook , our current project pages, or check out our refreshed water booklet to find out more about our water work - you can email us to request print copies of the booklet. Farmers and growers get water wiseMore than 70 Bay of Plenty water users attended irrigation efficiency workshops last month, to learn how to maximise irrigation system performance, save money and reduce water waste. Irrigation NZ ran the workshops with funding from Regional Council and support from Dairy NZ, NZ Kiwifruit Growers Inc. and NZ Avocado. Key learnings for the farmers and growers that attended were the value of regular maintenance checks, soil moisture monitoring, and water meters to track actual water use. Four local case studies that outline easy wins for irrigation system improvements on a dairy farm, avocado orchard newer system, avocado orchard older system and kiwifruit orchard are now available online. Water quantity hearings completeHearings for the Proposed Region-wide Water Quantity Plan Change (Plan Change 9) are now complete. Forty submitters appeared before the hearings panel and four provided written evidence. The hearings panel is now considering the evidence and will make recommendations which will be presented to Regional Councillors on 27 June. Contact Glenys Kroon to find out more. 3000 attend Happy Harbour Fun DayApproximately 3000 people attended a free family fun day hosted by Regional Council on 3 March at Tauranga’s Memorial Park. Lots of hands-on fun activities were on offer to help people discover what lives in the harbour and learn how their activities on land can affect our rivers, streams and sea. Real-time reports onlineCustomised reports and real-time data on rainfall, soil moisture, river levels and other measures monitored by Bay of Plenty Regional Council are now available from a new Environmental Data Portal at https://envdata.boprc.govt.nz . Regional Council is the first in New Zealand to use the new platform which puts real-time data at the fingertips of staff and members of the public. Council’s most popular datasets are now available on the portal and users are encouraged to provide feedback to info@boprc.govt.nz so the system can be refined and added to over time. New guides for Lake Rotorua rural landownersMore than 1500 landowners in the Lake Rotorua catchment have been contacted by Council this month and invited to talk through their new obligations under the Lake Rotorua Nutrient Management Rules (Plan Change 10). Lifestyle block owners in the catchment have also been sent a new guide that contains information on voluntary stocking rates and other tips on how they can help reduce nitrogen levels in Lake Rotorua. Read more>> First clear results for Kopeopeo Canal clean-upResults from testing on the first dredged section of the Kopeopeo Canal (which drains into the Whakatāne River) are showing safe sediment dioxin levels in the treated area. The results confirm that the clean-up method is working so dredging is now continuing throughout the remediation area. The Kopeopeo Canal clean-up project is taking a staged approach to remove, safely store and treat up to 40,000m3 of sediment that was contaminated by sawmill storm water discharges between the 1950s and late 1980s. See project details here>> Orchard water takes to be examinedRegional Council staff are working with representatives from the Te Puke and Katikati Fruitgrowers Association, NZ Kiwifruit Growers Inc and NZ Avocado Growers to help more water users understand and meet their water metering and consent obligations. More than 140 Bay of Plenty orchard owners registered their water takes with the Council through a series of workshops held throughout the Bay in 2016. Many of those registered were unsure whether their water use was within Permitted Activity abstraction rules, or required resource consent. As specific water use was often not known, many orchardists needed to install water meters and start regularly recording water use, to confirm exactly how much water was being abstracted for orchard use. Over the coming months Council staff will be contacting those who registered, to undertake a one on one assessment of the regulatory requirements for each orchard owner. Long Term Plan proposes $46m for water workA budget of $46m was been allocated to 2018/19 water management work in the proposed Long Term Plan 2018-28. As outlined in p.17 of the Long Term Plan Consultation document, that budget will fund a range of action on the ground, science, planning, and policy work, to improve and protect the water in our rivers, streams, lakes and underground aquifers. Submissions on the Long Term Plan have now closed and 225 submissions are now being processed before public hearings are held between 16 and 20 April. Anyone who’s made a submission and indicated they wish to speak to it, will be contacted with more detail about that. After hearings, Council will hold deliberations in May, and a final Long Term Plan 2018-2028 will be adopted by 30 June. National targets part of bigger Bay of Plenty pictureMinistry for the Environment (MfE) has determined that more than 94 percent of the Bay of Plenty’s rivers and 85 percent of our lakes are currently swimmable (based on E.coli concentrations for rivers and toxic algae levels for lakes). That means that across the rivers and lakes assessed by MfE, our region’s swimmability gradings are already better than the 2030 national target of 80%. However more work is planned, and needed, to keep improving water quality across a range of indicators in all our local waterways, big and small. Draft regional swimmability targets for rivers and lakes will be considered by Regional Councillors later this month and are due to be finalised by December 2018. In the meantime, our work to keep identifying and delivering on water management targets set by our local communities will continue. Bay water bottling consents still pendingThe public notification period on the Creswell NZ Limited consent application (related to the expansion of the existing Otakiri bottling plant) closed on 5 February. Our consents team are currently working their way through the 154 submissions that were received. The proposed Murupara No.1 & No.2. consent application to take water for bottling is currently being revised by the applicant. See information about how water is allocated for any kind of consented use at www.boprc.govt.nz/wateruse Consent compliance report releasedThroughout each year, Regional Council staff check compliance across a full range of consented activities in the Bay of Plenty to make sure rules are followed and environmental risks are well managed. For 2016/17, those checks involved 1,868 site visits by staff to range of places including earthworks sites, effluent ponds at dairy farms, and agricultural sites that take water for their crops. An easy to read report on the findings from our 2016/17 compliance checks is now available online at www.boprc.govt.nz/compliancereports Hands on learning for Trident High60 students from Trident High School have been learning about water sampling with the Regional Council environmental monitoring team this month. The Year 11 students spent a day visiting our Whakatāne laboratory and the Whakatane River where they discovered different aspects of water quality and its impacts. Algae data now on LAWAEverything you need to know before you take a dip at your local beach, river or lake is now available at www.lawa.org.nz/swim. Lake algae (cyanobacteria) monitoring information can now be viewed on the site and is factored into swim safety gradings, which also assess E.coli bacteria in freshwater or enterococci bacteria in sea water. Links to the latest weather forecasts and other handy trip planning information is also available for each swim monitoring site. See a video of how Gemma, our Algal Monitoring Assistant collects and tests water samples for toxic algae here >> Water samples for art exhibitSupported by Regional Council’s Te Hāpai Ora – Regional Community Outcomes Fund, the Tauranga Art Gallery will be hosting a Whose Water Are You? exhibition by Tauranga-based Swedish artist Jeanette Schäring from 14 April – 15 July 2018. Jeanette has invited locals to contribute water samples and stories from their everyday lives and surroundings to help create her installation. There are set times and dates for sample drop off between 21-27 March, see details here>> |