Improving the management of stormwater
North Shore City Council is currently considering options to improve the management of stormwater throughout the city.
The proposed plan changes and their associated variations were publicly notified on 12 April 2007. Submissions closed on 18 May 2007. A summary of submissions is currently being prepared for each proposed plan change.
A number of key issues are driving these changes:
- North Shore City has a goal of protecting our natural environment. The current level of development in some cases threatens this goal.
- Three key Acts of Parliament – the Building Act, the Local Government Act and the Resource Management Act all require councils to manage their environments in a more sustainable manner.
- The 13,000 hectares of North Shore City receive an average 1250 millimetres of rain each year. Before humans arrived here, nature coped quite well with this rainfall. But today, one third of the city is covered by impervious surfaces. This area continues to increase every year, causing an unnatural rush of water down the natural water courses towards the beaches. This must be arrested and progressively brought back closer to the pace which nature intended.
- More people want to live in the city. That means more buildings, roads and paths, creating more pressure on stormwater systems.
- The Council’s strategy is to prevent problems from arising rather than trying to fix them once they have occurred.
The council is taking a four pronged approach to better management of stormwater and the effects it has on our city. These include:
- Managing the effects of impervious surfaces
- Providing a buffer between our streams and development
- Avoiding development in areas at greatest risk of flooding
- Better control of site works which generate sediment and other pollutants
While the issues above are addressed separately, altogether these four areas are highly inter-related and inter-dependant. Impervious surfaces will affect streams and flood areas, water running off site works will affect stream quality, and so on.
