Aligning new development with existing infrastructure

Issue

Infrastructure used for water and power supply, transportation, telecommunications, flood protection, waste disposal and renewable energy generation can lead to issues for people affected by new and potentially sensitive land uses.

Causes

Sensitive activities that seek to establish close to an existing activity may create amenity effects (such as noise or visual impacts). For example, proposed new dwellings close to a flight path or main road. Management of these effects can become difficult when the established activity is part of essential infrastructure such as buildings, roads, and power supplies.

Why it matters

Regionally significant infrastructure and essential structures enable the wellbeing of the Waitaha/Canterbury community, by providing services such as transport routes, electricity distribution and protection from floods. It is important to manage reverse sensitivity effects to protect the ongoing use of important infrastructure as well as the wellbeing of nearby communities. An example of this is avoiding subdivision near the Christchurch International Airport, where the noise of planes taking off and landing could negatively affect people’s wellbeing.

Our current goals

Our Regional Policy Statement includes some direction that must be implemented and other direction that should be implemented. We have included these in two categories below:

1. Things we must do

This is very strong policy direction that is required to be implemented:

• To avoid detrimental effects on the stability, performance, operation, maintenance, upgrade, and repair of essential structures.
• To protect the stability, performance, operation, and maintenance of essential structures that are in, on, under or over a river or lake bed or its bank or margin.

2. Things we should do

This policy direction is strongly encouraged:

• Investigate and, where appropriate, promote alternative, less invasive or indigenous vegetation for bank stabilisation and flood protection works, than for example, willow or wattle species.

Should we change our goals?

When we consider changing goals, we need to keep in mind that other on-the-ground changes will be required to meet them. We also need to keep in mind that some of our must-do policy direction was necessary to meet the national legislation requirements of the time. Some new must-dos will be needed to meet more recent legislation.

Potential impacts of changing our policy direction

We have outlined some of the potential consequences that could result from changing our policy direction. These are high-level examples, just to illustrate that each change will have flow-on effects.

For example, if we increase the protection for infrastructure, it could reduce our ability to build more homes for people in certain areas. Less protection for infrastructure could result in service providers needing to raise the costs for their services (or raise rates) to be able to reduce the noise or visual impact of their activity.

We are using the feedback we received in July and August to draft more detailed policy options, including detail about the consequences of change. You will get another opportunity to tell us what you think about those options in October this year.