The public can follow the progress of the Otago Regional Council’s Land and Water Regional Plan, when two staff workshops are opened up this month.

The Otago Regional Council (ORC) has received more than 550 submissions on its controversial plan, and the next stage will involve two Environmental Science & Policy (ESP) workshops, where staff will summarise the main feedback across topics, and seek policy direction from the committee.

Following 12 public drop-in sessions held throughout Otago and two on-line meeting attracting more than 370 people, the online public responses to the Land and Water Regional Plan closed last week.

ORC’s general manager policy and science Anita Dawe says she is “really pleased” with the feedback, both the number of people and organisations which took the time to provide feedback, and the suggestions for alternative ways to manage issues.

“It is really important that our staff have alternative approaches to consider from the feed-back so they can weigh up the current draft rules against a workable alternative."

So far, the four general themes of most public interest have included proposed changes around setbacks from waterbodies for various farming activities, the suggested limits on the number of cows per hectare as a measure of intensity, the suggested restrictions on the amount of nitrogen fertiliser used per hectare and some useful feedback

around minimum flows for the Manuherikia River, Anita said. 

Following the staff workshops in November, staff will meet again on December 6, to put forward a paper, which summarises the feedback received, for noting by councillors.

On December 14 there will be a full day briefing for ESP to talk through the draft plan that will be available for Clause 3 consultation in 2024.

This will be public excluded, as it will be subject to legal privilege.

The council will be asked in June next year to approve the plan for notification.