The battle over access to the Delaware Bay estuary is heading to the Environment Court with council seeking a declaration from the court.
Nelson City Council have lodged an application for the Environment Court to decide whether a resource consent is needed to drive over the estuary.
Group manager environmental management Clare Barton says vehicle and boat access across the beach at Delaware Bay has been the subject of ongoing discussion for many years.
In the Nelson Resource Management Plan, driving over a beach or estuary is not a permitted activity and therefor requires a resource consent.
“Whilst the council considers vehicle/boat access is not permitted, questions have been raised about the meaning of the provisions in the Nelson Resource Management Plan (NRMP) regarding access across the beach area and out into Tasman Bay/Te Tai-o-Aorere,” Clare says.
“Accordingly, Council officers have lodged a declaration application with the Environment Court to ensure the meaning of the plan provisions is clear for all parties concerned.”
However, the site at Bishop’s Peninsula on Māori Pa Rd has been used by recreational boaties to launch and retrieve small vessels for decades, with no enforcement from council on the matter until 2020.
In fact, boaties say that council illegally removed the site as an official launching area when they updated the NRMP in 2001 and that it should be recognised as an official launch site, one that is much safer than nearby Cable Bay.
In December 2021, a 1400-stong petition was presented to Parliament by Peter Ruffell on behalf of Delaware Bay Access Group to this affect, asking that the Delaware Bay Estuary boat launch be reinstated.
Peter says the group are disappointed that council are taking the issue to the Environment Court.
“It would’ve been a lot cheaper and better if everybody had sat round the table to come to an amicable solution for everyone, which is what we’ve been trying to do.”
He says the process has been “frustrating”.
“Once we’ve been officially notified of the application, we will have a meeting to decide our next steps,” Peter says.
The application will be seeking a declaration that driving on the beach is not a permitted activity under Rule CMr.33 of the Nelson Resource Management Plan (NRMP), and therefore, the activity requires resource consent.
In a submission to the petition, Clare says this has been how the council has been interpreting its plan provisions, but “due to the opposition from locals and recreational fishers”, the council decided the appropriate way forward was to ask the Environment Court to make a declaration.
She says Peter raised a suggestion that due to ‘prior existing use, resource consent is not required to launch or retrieve boats at Delaware Bay’.
“There is no protection for existing uses under the Resource Management Act when the activity requires resource consent as a consequence of rule becoming operative in a regional coastal plan (i.e. the NRMP). Even if the use was permitted prior to the NRMP becoming operative, section 20A of the RMA requires that a resource consent is obtained for an activity that requires resource consent. There is no ability to continue existing uses, even if lawfully established.”
Anyone who wishes to be heard at the Environment Court hearing needs to notify the Environment Court Registrar withing 15 working days after the date the application was made, 8 August.
Council says at the end of July the cost of the application has so far been $4850.
