Election 2017 - Party Policies - Environment - Water and Oceans
27th May 17, 9:46am
by
Water and Oceans
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- Introduce better water management, where water rights are tradeable, giving owners greater incentives to conserve water and oppose pollution of it.
- Reform water use rights, moving away from fixed limits and first-in-first-served arrangements, to a more economically efficient market-based system of pricing tradeable water use rights.
- Read more here and here.
- Update the Resource Management Act (RMA) to ensure that water in aquifers will be safe from pollution.
- Strengthen environmental management framework for Exclusive Economic Zone.
- Put an immediate 10 cent/litre levy on the sale and export of water, including bottled water.
- Improve regulations to protect our sources of drinking water.
- Reinstate the Drinking Water Subsidy Scheme.
- Read more here, here, here, and here.
- Introduce a new NPS for Freshwater Management based on the principles in the 2010 Sheppard version. Require via the NPS that rivers and lakes be clean enough for people to swim in during summer without getting sick, while achieving aquatic ecosystem health.
- Adopt strong nationwide freshwater quality standards, including for pathogens, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, periphyton a.k.a. slime, and macroinvertebrate health.
- Work with Māori to restore the mauri to waterways subjected to pollution and practices that have compromised the relationship iwi and hapū have traditionally had with these taonga.
- Work with urban local authorities, particularly in the main centres, to improve stormwater management, to separate stormwater from sewage, and to maintain or enhance the health of receiving waterways.
- Introduce a freshwater royalty on water bottlers and other large commercial water users, and set the royalty at a fair and affordable level.
- Read more here and here.
- Legislate to protect freshwater and give it the status of tāonga.
- Set up annual Te Mana o Te Wai funding to support community projects such as planting riparian buffers and establish wetlands.
- Establish a Minister for Freshwater to give urgent priority to addressing freshwater protection, rights and interests.
- Impose a moratorium on the sale of water (this includes all water used/sold for commercial use including water exports by foreign companies) so that issues around water, namely quality, management and ownership, can be addressed.
- Prioritise action to counter the effects of pollution caused by nitrogen and phosphorus that are leaching into our waterways.
- Read more here.
- Investing a record $400m in freshwater cleanups.
- Work with regional councils and communities to deliver on our target for 90 per cent of rivers and lakes to be swimmable by 2040; and provide greater central Government leadership over the provision of storm water, drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
- Improve the allocation of freshwater and introduce a system to allocate nutrient discharges to ensure the system is fair and equitable for all New Zealanders.
- National will advance world leading marine management through improved fisheries monitoring and integrated marine protection legislation.
- Consult on changes to the Marine Protected Areas Act.
- Read more here.
- Make all drilling/exploration/extraction projects in New Zealand waters subject to public consultation.
- Reject the taxation of water used within New Zealand beyond the recovery of capital and the operational costs of taking, storing and reticulating it.
- Hold that water is a common good and cannot be owned by any person, including the Crown, and that the Treaty of Waitangi does not confer rights to take or use water upon Māori which are greater or lesser than the rights of any other New Zealander.
- Place national needs in order of priority for the granting of commercial water rights as opposed to the current first in - first served approach.
- Provide for sustainable outcomes in water for commercial purposes (including electricity and irrigation) in addition to meeting RMA requirements.
- Read more here.
- Introduce a coherent royalties regime that would attach a price to water when it is taken, and develop a clear national policy about water exports.
- Introduce a $10 million per year contestable fund for the purpose of funding innovative research into New Zealand’s environment, to fund projects such as river cleanup research.
- Provide targeted funding for research into didymo with the intention of exterminating it from our rivers and develop a rapid response unit within Biosecurity New Zealand to respond to future reported potential threats similar to didymo, with the mandate to immediately ‘close’ a waterway from public use.
- Re-balance the rights of recreational fishers by extending the powers of the Walking Access Commission so they can advocate for and, if necessary, secure appropriate public access to, public resources such as rivers.
- Create “helicopter -free“ zones on selected wilderness rivers to protect the quality of fishing and access by Kiwis, to be administered by Fish and Game NZ.
- Read more here.
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