Proposed Plan Change A1

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Publicly notified 25 September 2010
operative 12 march 2012

At its meeting on 7 April 2011 Council resolved to engage an independent Commissioner to hear and make decisions on submissions on proposed Council Plan Change A1 to the NAQP. A hearing was held on 15 July 2011 and the Council publicly notified its decisions on Saturday 5 November 2011.

A copy of the Commissioner’s Report on Hearing and Decisions on Submissions along with the public notice of decisions is available for download under the ‘Documents and downloads’ section below.

Every submitter and further submitter was served with a copy of these decisions and  under Cl.14 of the First Schedule of the RMA any submitter or further submitter was able appeal a provision or matter that was the subject of their submission to the Environment Court within 30 working days.

No appeals were lodged in relation to Plan Change A1 and, at its meeting on 23 February 2012, the Council resolved to approve the plan change and make it operative on 12 March 2012.

Background

Proposed Plan Change A1 consists of six parts:
  • A new rule to deal with the use of wood pellet fuel in industrial-scale fuel burning appliances.
  • Transitional provisions for domestic open fires and enclosed burners in rural properties which, through change in land use or rezoning, become subject to the Air Quality Plan’s ‘Urban Area’ controls. The new rule allows such fires to continue to be used and replaced in the future with clean air approved burners if the owners wish.
  • An update to the map showing what is ‘Urban Area’.
  • Correcting an error that prevents existing ‘Jetmaster’-type fires within the Urban Area (which can be used until 1 January 2013) from being replaced with a complying woodburner.
  • Deleting rule AQr.55A which allows the burning of certain agricultural plastics. There are now two product stewardship programmes that operate in the region enabling the recycling rather than burning of bale wrap and agrichemical containers.
  • A minor change to allow different stack (flue) arrangements for domestic burners running on diesel.

Documents and downloads 

Contact person

For more information contact the Policy Planner +64 3 546 0432