Designing a solution to dust

Dust is a concern for many Christchurch residents. Together, we’re working toward a solution.

March 17 2025: Have your say on the draft River Gravel Management Strategy
Through our previous dust-related consultations, we have received some feedback related to gravel extraction. Because of the links between gravel management and dust, you may be interested in reading and giving feedback about the new draft River Gravel Management Strategy. Find out more and tell us what you think by 5pm on Tuesday 22 April 2025.

We made a commitment in the Long-Term Plan 2021-31 to tackle the ongoing concerns of many residents with dust in Christchurch.

A new approach

By working with industry and the community, we tackled the long-standing odour issue at Bromley.

The programme was a big success, so we’re taking a similar approach to dust, specifically for northwest Christchurch.

Co-design workshops

We held a series of co-design workshops between October and December 2021.

These workshops brought together community, industry, and councils to better understand the issues from the community’s perspective, as well as identify the roles, responsibilities and regulations that play a part in it.

All of this was done with the aim of designing a workable solution.

The outcomes from the workshops are available in the ‘Workshop summaries’ section on the right of this page.

Dust monitoring webpage

In April 2023, a new webpage, Dust monitoring - northwest Christchurch was created. The page shows monitoring information for the previous six months, including the number of reports we've received and proactive site visits in these areas. The data is updated with the latest information monthly.

This gives the community a view of what is actually being reported to us and how we are responding.

Sign up to our dust monitoring newsletter

If you'd like to receive monthly updates about our dust monitoring, click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

Revised statement from Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora

In February 2024, Dr. Ramon Pink, Regional Clinical Director of Public Health Medicine at Health New Zealand, replied to letters that Chair Peter Scott and Deputy Chair Craig Pauling sent in late 2023. Health NZ's reply included a revised statement on the health impact of dust. This letter was tabled at a public meeting of the Council’s Transport, Urban Development and Air Quality Committee on 10 April 2024. Download the Health NZ letter here.

Literature review

We commissioned a literature review about regulatory best practice for quarry dust management from Pattle Delamore Partners in 2023 after a public tender process. Download the full literature review here.

The literature review covers the following topics:

• Sources and impacts of dust from quarries

• Regulatory best practice for the control of dust

• Non-regulatory methods for the control of dust at quarries

• Reducing the emissions of dust from quarries, mitigation and monitoring.

The literature review makes a number of recommendations for future work. You can read those recommendations in section 11 of the report, on page 97.

Thank you for submitting your feedback

We invited you to submit your feedback about the literature review and your ideas about how we should prioritise future work with dust. The feedback period closed on 10 July 2024.You can view all the feedback we received and read a summary of the feedback.

The literature review and the feedback we received in response was discussed at a Council workshop on 5 September 2024. We will present options for future dust work to the Council in November 2024.