Water standards decision still secret

New rules for rural landowners to meet water quality standards may have been pushed out to 2026 — but the Otago Regional Council will not reveal its decision until February 8.

In a second split decision in a week on whether to keep its deliberations behind closed doors, the council this week voted 6-5 to keep the decision-making on its so-called Plan Change 6AA private.

Yesterday, the council declined to reveal whether it had adopted a commissioner’s recommendations for the plan change, or release the report on which the decision was made.

"The report with the hearing commissioner's recommendations on Plan Change 6AA was considered by the Otago Regional Council in a public-excluded session, and the report and decision are currently still publicly excluded information," a spokesman said.

The decisions of the council on the plan change would be publicly notified on the second Saturday of next month.

A week earlier another 6-5 vote decided whether to discuss a matter in public or private. Then, the decision on how to deal with the phasing out of 100-year-old mining water rights was discussed in public after Crs Hilary Calvert, Alexa Forbes, Michael Laws, Gary Kelliher, Kevin Malcolm, and Bryan Scott voted against making the decision with the public excluded.

On January 22 chairwoman Marian Hobbs and Crs Michael Deaker, Carmen Hope, Andrew Noone, and Gretchen Robertson lost the vote to keep the public out.

Cr Kate Wilson abstained.

In March last year, Cr Laws laid a complaint with the Ombudsman after the council discussed its capacity to deal with the expiry of the historic mining water rights in a private session.

On Wednesday, he referred to the investigation his complaint spurred and said while that was ongoing, the council ought to make every effort to appear transparent.

Crs Kelliher, Scott, Deaker, and Calvert joined Cr Laws and voted against entering a public-excluded session on Plan Change 6AA, but Crs Robertson, Malcolm, Forbes, Wilson, and Hope voted to exclude the public. Initially, Ms Hobbs abstained and the vote was tied. On a second vote, she tipped the balance and the council asked the public to leave the meeting.

At the meeting, council staff said to hold the meeting in public would effectively extend the 20-day appeal period that was required after the plan change was notified.

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