How Otago Regional Council and Queenstown Lakes District Council navigate compliance monitoring of residential earthworks.
Otago Regional Council (ORC) established new earthworks provisions in 2020 to strengthen their management of discharges to water. ORC's compliance monitoring team inherited a new activity to monitor. Collaboration with Queenstown Lakes District Council's (QLDC) compliance monitoring team made tackling this task less daunting.
Approximately 65% of ORC's residential earthworks consents fall within QLDC's boundary. Collaboration between ORC and QLDC proves hugely beneficial in managing the overlap in responsibilities.
The presenters will share; how their compliance teams managed this overlap at an administrative and operational level, the challenges, the successes, how the regulatory burden is reduced for consent holders and where to from here. Let us show you how we are stronger together in improving environmental outcomes for Otago.
WHEN
Thursday 2 November
2:15pm
FULL PROGRAMME
Click here to download the full programme
Presenters
Melanie Heather
Senior Environmental Officer, Otago Regional Council
Melanie is an Irish-born Environmental Scientist with approximately 19 years' experience in Ireland, the USA, and New Zealand. She began her career in 2001 working in environmental consultancy and transitioned to local government in 2009. She has been in ORC's compliance team since 2017 after serving 8 years in QLDC's infrastructure department. Her current areas of focus are in residential earthworks and bore compliance, with a particular focus on drinking water supplies.
Isabelle Logez
Monitoring, Enforcement, and Environmental Team Leader, Queenstown Lakes District Council
Isabelle joined Queenstown Lakes District Council over 6 years ago within the Monitoring and Enforcement Team. During this time, she has progressed into the Team Leader position where she oversees the enforcement of various legislation, ranging from bylaws to the Maritime Transport Act 1994. Isabelle has a particular interest in environmental management and ensuring that sites and developments across the district are aware and complying with their legislative requirements.
Georgia Simmonds
Senior Environmental Officer, Otago Regional Council
Georgia is originally from Rotorua but relocated to the South Island after completing her Masters. She has since worked for local government since 2020 where she started her career working for Environment Canterbury.
Her areas of focus include residential earthworks, on-site wastewater systems and wineries. Georgia’s passion lies in creating behaviour change with earthworks contractors and improving environmental outcomes. To achieve this she successfully developed an informative event allowing for open discussion to demystify the work ORC does and create a shared understanding of environmental impacts.