Industry
The industry side of consents monitoring for Horizons consists of monitoring of the ‘three waters’ (water abstractions, wastewater and stormwater), landfills, composting facilities, and industrial processing sites. These activities happen across the region, carried out by private companies, individuals and territorial authorities (district and city councils).
The monitoring which takes place, and how often it happens, is determined based on risk. Determining this risk takes into account the actual or potential environmental impact of the site, compliance history, public interest, and size of the site to determine the scale and frequency of proactive monitoring. Activities may also be monitored on a reactive basis when non-compliance is notified or suspected, operating in conjunction with our Pollution Hotline service.
Waste Management
We monitor consents around the region for various municipal facilities, including stormwater systems, wastewater treatment plants, and landfills. We also monitor industrial operations including timber treatment, manufacturing, composting, meat works, and privately owned landfills.
Waste management sites we monitor hold resource consents for many activities, including odour or particulate emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, wastewater discharges to land or water, stormwater or leachate discharges, and the discharge of solids to land.
Our Consents Monitoring team ensures consent holders are abiding by conditions of their consents. This is done by in-person visits to a site, and by completing desktop assessments of environmental and discharge monitoring results.
Water
Water is an extremely valuable resource, one we cannot survive without. Many of us get water via supplies from city and district councils, using it for everything from quenching our thirsts to disposing of the ‘waste’ we produce. Water is also used by businesses as varied as breweries, electricity producers and farms. To enable these activities, water is taken – we use the term ‘abstracted’.
Water is abstracted under a resource consent or permitted activity rules from groundwater sources (such as aquifers) and surface water sources (such as rivers and streams) for purposes including agriculture, irrigation, horticulture, industrial processes, hydro-electric power schemes, and municipal water supplies.
We monitor groundwater and surface water takes to ensure water resources are being abstracted in accordance with resource consent conditions. We do this monitoring through a combination of on-site inspections and desktop assessments. This includes reviewing flow meter records, including those automatically transmitted through telemetry or FTP systems, to ensure compliance with resource consent conditions.
During periods of low flow in our region’s rivers, we monitor the additional water restrictions that can come into play to protect the river ecosystems, known as “low flow restrictions”.
This programme involves close work across Horiozns, with the Environmental Data and Science teams helping to implement the Resource Management (Measurement and Reporting of Water Takes) Regulations 2010.
WaterMatters
WaterMatters allows consent holders to monitor water use from home, and lets everyone see how water is used across the region.
Low Flow Restrictions
See a quick summary of which parts of the region are either in or nearing water abstraction restrictions during the summer months.
Envirodata
Data from our environmental monitoring sites is published online on our Envirodata website.
Wastewater
Horizons has permitted activity rules for the discharge of stormwater to land or water. If these rules cannot be achieved, then a consent is required for this to be controlled. For more information about permitted activity rules for stormwater discharges see Chapter 14 of the One Plan.
Urban stormwater can collect a variety of contaminants as rainwater runs over impermeable surfaces. The levels and types of contaminants vary between residential, commercial and industrial land uses.
Contaminants can include:
• Sediment
• trace metals such as copper, lead and zinc
• hydrocarbons from petrol and oil
• pathogenic bacteria and viruses
• pesticides
• and trace organics such as phthalates and surfactants.
To improve the quality of runoff from your home and/or workplace, make a few simple changes with the help of NIWA.