Posts Tagged ‘trees’

Open season for trees

The Resource Management Act (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill is currently in the house. I've spent a bit of time to watch the debate, with particular interest in section 52 of the Bill.

The bill is not finalised so I'm not going to put it here. You can view the most updated version here. In a nutshell, the bill prohibits a district plan that prohibits tree removing, unless the tree is expressively protected in the district plan.

There are at least several concerns for this.

Firstly central government should not intervene local government businesses at such level of detail. District Plans have to give effects or at least have regard to several national documents, is not that enough? Every part of the country has its unique environment and situation, why the central government thinks it knows better than locals?

Secondly, this bill removes an important mechanism to protect urban enviroment. Environment minister Nick Smith argued that 98% of tree related concents are granted, therefore it is just a waste of time. Now here is an example of incompetency, he seems to forgot that consents can be granted with conditions and modifications.

Thirdly, it is likely to add unnessary workload for local authorities. I do expect an increased number of surveying in order to put more trees in the schedule after the law is passed, but happens for an area of unprotected bush? Waitakere is a good example - scheduling each single tree would be a process that you would never want to do it again.

So ... end of tree huggers?

Councils say they will not be able to stop people cutting down native bush and coastal pohutukawa in cities under planned changes to environment laws.

The Government wants to take away councils' power to stop trees over a certain size being chopped without permission. If the change goes ahead, landowners will be free to cut down any tree on their land unless it is listed in their council's district plan. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Oppositions to the councils' tree management claim that "it's their land so they should be able to do anything they like", but let's face it, it's no different than how a teenager feels like "I'm free and independent so I  can do what ever I want", we all get that kind of feeling during our adolescence time, most grow out of it, but sadly, some don't.

The basic principle of the Resource Management Act is the "effect based approach", as long as you can demonstrate that you can minimise the adverse effects on  environment, even a non-complying activity can get a go ahead.  I was a "tree hugger",which means that use trees as an excuse to stop development in quite a few cases,  in one case, a two storey new residential development is proposed on about two lots away from my friend's house, developer wants to chop down a 60m+ tree to provide an extra one or two parking spaces.

From my friend's  point of vew it's actually quite hard to see that tree, just the top part,  but I still criticized the development plan anyway because this is just too ridiculous. If development cannot get ahead without chopping down that tree I may just let it go, but such a tall tree for a mere parking space? Quite a lot of people still don't treat environment protection as part of citizens' responsibility, and think that as optional.

Property right was never absolute, before the current law system there were several common law principles existed, such as good neighbourliness, as long as you don't affect your neighbours' economic well-being then you should be fine. But we don't live in the beginning of the industrial age, we understand the value of our environment more than just a place to dump all our wastes for free.

Not a good one from National, I say, central government should minimise its influence on local government.