As bureaucrats strive for a sustainable environment, those affected most by the new laws are finding their way of life is becoming unsustainable.
Sustainability of our environment, including air and water quality, is dependent on optimum population levels being maintained well below the maximum possible.
No prosperous population in the world has been able to maintain growth and keep the quality of its environment pristine.
In fact, the most rapidly growing populations on the Earth today are generally the most miserable.
Controlled and well-planned growth can be good for a territorial authority's coffers, and after a critical mass has been achieved, communal facilities can be provided from local taxes, but where do we draw the line on taxes and compliance costs - when do we say enough is enough?In order to control environmental quality issues, the Government has had bureaucrats draft environmental standards, some of which have become law. These new laws often crack a nut with a sledgehammer and make no allowance for different geographic regions.
Three areas of such legislation I take issue with are air, fresh water, and carbon emission trading to offset global warming concerns.
I have been astounded at some of the compliance costs incurred by the legislation already passed.
Take the national environmental standards for air quality.
We are now hearing about the new health problems being generated by people unable to afford the cost of compliance.
The health cost of being cold on a Central Otago winter's day or night because you cannot afford the electricity to run an electric heating appliance may well exceed the other health costs the legislation was designed to cure.
The cost to the community in dollar terms - personally in converting from solid-fuel burning to clean appliances and collectively in converting non-complying coal-burning boilers to diesel, gas, or wood chips - is enormous in airshed 1 areas.
In Alexandra, Dunstan High School and the Ministry of Education have just spent more than $800,000 converting two perfectly functional coal-fired boilers at the school and hostel to wood-chip burners imported from Austria.
Experience so far shows running costs exceed those of the previous boilers. Surely, the money tagged for education would have been better spent in the classroom? Who is paying the enormous sums required for the conversion and ongoing costs of the coal-fired Dunstan Hospital boiler and the boiler warming the buildings occupied by the Otago Regional Council and Central Otago District Council in Alexandra? The answer is clear: the costs all come back to us in one way or another, through our rates or our taxes.
Legislation on fresh water is another area incurring enormous compliance costs.
In 1989, the Crown sold Central Otago irrigation schemes to the farmers to run as going concerns.
The irrigators knew what their water rights involved: they knew where the water came from, they knew how to use it to grow their crops, orchards, pastures, and latterly vineyards.
After all, they had been using irrigation in some cases since the gold-mining days, taking over mining rights and using associated water races since that time.
With the advent of the Resource Management Act, regional government has been charged with the task of ensuring irrigation companies and co-operatives are complying with the conditions of their water rights.
The Act required mining privileges to become deemed permits expiring in 2021, at which time they will have to be re-applied for.
I chair an irrigation company run by unpaid directors who generously give of their time. The company has been asked to pay $60,000 for the Otago Regional Council to tell us more or less what we already knew, and legalising what we already did.
But in their defence, they were doing what the Government said they had to do. What's more, legislation now requires us to measure the water we are entitled to use and report these figures to a consenting authority on a regular basis.
In our case, the measuring devices, which must conform once again to national standards, will cost an estimated $169,000. Unbelievable!A total of $229,000 for what? No extra water, no extra productivity, no extra income for the irrigators.
Not only that, we have to pay for the privilege of providing this information each year.
We received our annual monitoring account last year for $2642, before we have even built the devices to collect such data.
No wonder regional councils have become such behemoths.
Lastly, I hate to think what will end up in the emissions trading scheme legislation.
I enjoyed reading the ODT article on fascinating 90-year-old James Lovelock on August 15.
He stated that some of the more recent green hysteria is plain wrong, perhaps in line with what Gareth Morgan's interesting scientific investigation into global warming concluded.
Mr Lovelock's statement that all the CO2 humans produce is a problem not being addressed gives me great cause for concern our bureaucrats could hear about it.
The mind boggles at how will they legislate for that one.
A burp, fart and breath tax perhaps? I am not sure that the legislators in India or China will take any notice, though.
It is the Government that gets the real brickbat.
It passes the legislation a gaggle of bureaucratic geese seem to dream up.
The last straw for me came recently when I received a bullying letter from the Ministry of Economic Development giving me a friendly reminder the irrigation company had to file its annual return by January 8, 2010, under the Financial Reporting Amendment Act 2006.
Oh yes, and don't forget the $250 fee for the privilege.
Fail to do so and each director will be fined $7000. No wonder people are becoming more reluctant to volunteer to work for the wellbeing of their communities.
I really think that some of the bureaucrats trying to run this country are about as in touch with reality as the rabbis pictured in the Otago Daily Times a couple of weeks ago chanting prayers and blowing ritual ram's horns in an aircraft circling over Israel hoping to stop the spread of swine flu.
Rodney Hide will have a busy term if he is to sort this lot out. - Gavin Dann
