Sent: Wednesday, 9 October 2024 5:30 pm
Subject: Official Information request - Tarawera sewerage scheme consultation
I refer to your Official Information request of 2 October 2024 regarding the Tarawera sewerage scheme, specifically:
- Please provide records of consultation hui held to purposely and directly engage with the separate and independent autonomous hapu having registered Treaty of Waitangi claims at the time, namely Ngati Tumatawera, Ngati Kahu Upoku, Ngati Te Kahu, Ngati Apumoana claimant hapu concerning their customary and traiditonal lands and protected aboriginal native rights by the Charter of 1840 enacted that are likely to be affected by RDC’s proposals for the Tarawera sewerage treatment system of options to dispose of sewerage from the Tarawera lake region from the period 2014 to September 2024, in order to meet its statutory obligations and those under the respective 46 articles of The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples signed 21 April 2010 by New Zealand, and in recognition of the “Guide to the Principles of the TGreaty of Waitangi as expressed by the Courts and the Waitangi Tribunal” and any applicable statute law in force for that period.
- Please provide the amount of money paid from RDC funds to meet eachof those itemized consultation costs tabled by each of those mana whenua hapu groups. My right of request and reason is that I am a member of all these mana whenua groups and the requested information is to be made available to me and hapu ratgepayer beneficiaries who consider they have been prejudiced by the sewersage works under way today which the District Court had concerns that the paties before the court on 16 July were not all the parties.
Council commissioned Te Arawa Lakes Trust (TALT) to lead the structuring of a Cultural Impacts Assessment (CIA) regarding the Tarawera sewerage scheme. Council paid TALT $90,000 for this work. TALT engaged appropriate mana whenua representatives to undertake those assessments. The identification of the relevant mana whenua entities for input to the assessments was the responsibility of those mana whenua representatives.
A CIA is a report documenting Māori cultural values, interests and associations with an area or a resource, and the potential impacts of a proposed activity on these. CIAs are a tool to facilitate meaningful and effective participation of Māori in impact assessment. A CIA is regarded as technical advice, much like any other technical report such as ecological or hydrological assessments.
There is no statutory requirement for the council to prepare or commission a CIA. However, an assessment of impacts on cultural values and interests can assist the council to meet statutory obligations in a number of ways, including:
- preparation of an Assessment of Environmental Effects (AEE) in accordance with s88(2)(b) and Schedule 4 of the Resource Management Act 1991 ('the RMA')
- providing information to assist the council in determining notification status
- providing information to enable appropriate consideration of the relevant matters when making a decision
- consideration of appropriate conditions for design mitigations
You may wish to seek further information from the authors of the CIA as to how they have identified the relevant mana whenua entities for the CIA reports and the process they used to complete the CIA reports.
