Mount Industrial Community E-Newsletter - December 2020Tēnā koutou, Welcome to the second edition of the Mount Industrial Community e-newsletter. On behalf of the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, we wish you a safe, happy Christmas and prosperous New Year! We appreciate the community’s concerns about the Mount Maunganui industrial area impacting air quality and bordering the Whareroa Marae and residential area. Regional Council is committed to addressing the air quality issues in Mount Maunganui and is proactively working with all partners to find a way forward in this complex situation which has been generations in the making. Read on for updates on the following topics:
If there are any topics you would like us to cover in the next quarterly newsletter, please let us know by replying to this email. Mount Maunganui Air Quality Working Party establishedAn Air Quality Working Party has been set up with all members having the common objective of a clean environment for present and future generations. It includes representatives from a range of groups and organisations including Regional Council, Tauranga City Council, Clear the Air Mt Maunganui, Whareroa Marae, Ngāti Kuku, Ngāi te Rangi, Toi Te Ora Public Health, Western Bay of Plenty Primary Health Organisation, Ballance Agri-nutrients and Ministry for the Environment. The meetings will be bi-monthly and the membership will be increased to represent a larger range of industry, iwi and community voices. The party’s core aspirations are collaboration, co-operation, cohesion and understanding, to strive beyond the current air quality standards and bring in transformational thinking. Submissions on the Genera resource consent applicationGenera Limited has applied for resource consent to continue using methyl bromide for fumigation at the Port of Tauranga. We received a total of 335 submissions with 52 submitters indicating they want to speak at a hearing. This consent was one of the first where we trialled alternate communication methods, including using our Regional Council Facebook page, where the post on this matter reached over 29,000 people before the submission period closed last month. We also put out a push notification through the Antenno app, which you can learn more about here. By using Antenno, we were able to draw more peoples' attention to the submission process, so they had a chance to have their say. The external consenting planner who has been contracted to assess Genera’s application is still working through the submissions and writing the recommendation report for the hearing commissioner(s) consideration. Once the report is completed, a hearing date will be determined. Council also recommends that the applicant considers whether concerns raised by submitters can be addressed ahead of scheduling a formal hearing, and some time can be provided for this. NES exceedances & what we’re doingAfter six months without breaches of the set limits within the Mount Maunganui airshed, we have had three National Environmental Standard (NES) breaches of PM10 (dust) recorded since October 2020. Our monitoring network detected these at the Railyard South site on Totara Street and at the Whareroa Marae monitoring site. Following an NES breach, we undertake a series of actions, including:
Investigating an app to report pollutionRegional Council is investigating the possibility of using an app to help people report incidents of pollution. At the Monitoring and Operations Committee meeting last week, Councillors asked staff to explore the possibility of an app to work alongside the existing 24/7 Pollution Hotline, 0800 884 883. We will keep you updated with progress in the new year. Did someone forward this newsletter to you? Click subscribe to receive the next edition straight to your inbox. |