Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is giving the public more time to comment on the future use and protection of the Tukituki River catchment.
HBRC has been working on a range of solutions for the Tukituki catchment since before 2008, to achieve positive environmental, social, cultural and economic outcomes for the region, in favour of a prosperous future.
Earlier this month HBRC released the discussion document, Tukituki Choices, outlining a range of options for the future management of the river catchment. This public process is in addition to formal consultation which will be required as part of the plan change process and the resource consenting process, should the water storage project be approved through its feasibility phase.
HBRC expects to make a decision on whether to lodge a resource consent application, at its 31 October meeting. No final decision on whether the water storage project goes ahead will be made until the project gains resource consent.
In advance of that meeting and decisions to be made, this is an opportunity for public to submit their comments on the four choices offered up within Tukituki Choices.
HBRC has held numerous public meetings to discuss the four scenarios outlined in the document, two with water storage and two without.
Initially the public was given until Friday 5 October 2012 to lodge a written submission, but that deadline has now been extended until Monday 15 October 2012.
HBRC Chief Executive Andrew Newman says that, given much of the economic information feeding into the Tukituki Choices discussion document is only just becoming publicly available; it makes sense to give the public more time to digest this information.
The Tukituki Choices document is available to be downloaded from www.hbrc.govt.nz. Printed copies are available at Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s office in Napier. Reading copies are available from public libraries throughout Hawke’s Bay.
Written submissions should be with HBRC by 5pm, Monday 15 October, 2012. Verbal presentations and pro-forma submissions will not be considered.