"Obviously, times have moved on."
Mr Kircher said he expected the Waitaki District Council’s forthcoming draft district plan to include significant earthworks in residential zones.
The council’s overarching rule book for the district, which will next year set new rules until 2030, at present includes some earthworks as requiring a consent in rural zones, but residential zones are not given the same consideration.
This year, a 50-section subdivision in Oamaru created unease in the community as neighbouring residents complained about dust, noise and sedimentation — and then learned the developer was not required to apply to the council to do the work.
Under the expected new rules, though — to be developed through consultation on the draft district plan in about six months — that would change.
"It will be over a certain amount of earthworks before it requires [a consent]," Mr Kircher said.
"Because we want development to happen, we’re encouraging it to happen — it just needs to be the right development in the right place.
"And [we want to] make sure it’s not development which causes an undue nuisance to neighbours, which is the whole purpose around sustainable development in the Resource Management Act [RMA].
"When the district plan was developed originally, it was quite a different time when we weren’t getting — for us — large-scale subdivisions happening, and a lot of earthworks happening, in a residential area."
The current district plan did include rules for earthworks in rural areas and after considering in a public-excluded session last month what the council considered a clear breach of its rules, the council issued a reminder that illegal earthworks in rural areas that constituted an offence against the RMA could result in fines of up to $600,000 and up to two years’ jail.
