RMA. That's the Resource Management Act - a piece of legislation that was, in its time, ground breaking and world leading but which has by now become a stone around our necks.
I have just sat through nearly 140 days of public hearings - a process under the Act, by means of which the citizens of New Zealand but more particularly the citizens of Oamaru (where I live) can have an influence on an application by Holcim to build a cement manufacturing plant in a nearby rural valley. The Waiareka Valley is a delightful fully rural valley that has a pastoral and cropping history going back maybe 150 years. During the early periods of this history it was owned by just a few landowners who built a few magnificent houses and out-buildings. About three of those homesteads survive and they are in the hands of capable caring owners with a fine sense of the history of the valley and its inhabitants.
Much has changed in 140 years. The valley is now home to a number of big and generally intensive dairy farms and it has become a favoured location for many life-style property owners.
The trouble is that it is in a geologically rich area with significant coal deposits, plenty of silica sand and huge resources of soft and very pure limestone.
The most significant and accessible source of the limestone (which is the main ingredient of cement) is also a very prominent landscape feature but it is also a place that our local town council has deemed a suitable place for a cement factory and all the planning maps have shown this quite clearly for decades. There is much legal debate over the status of the planning maps and their content and legality but essentially the land at the foot of the escarpment which contains millions of tons of limestone and where a quarry can legally be located, is the preferred location for Holcim (a Swiss company) and this long and drawn out clash of land use and landscape has resulted in the formation of a Valley Preservation Society with an objective of preventing the development ( a power they can legally exercise through the Resource Management hearings process)
The consents for the plant and its associated quarries were granted last year but they have been appealed (another perfectly legal and reasonable avenue available to the people who do not want the cement plant in their valley) and here we come to the big crunch, for me.
Here in New Zealand we have an indigenous race of people generally called Maori. They are numerous but sometimes quite invisible both because they are not always physically obvious (no distinct facial or other distinguishing characteristics) but also because they mostly have a low-key approach to complex issues like this and don't or haven't until recently, been empowered to have an input into development issues.
That has changed.
All over the world, indigenous people have taken the opportunity presented by liberal and enlightened governments to manage their affairs more aggressively and engage with government and in local politics where in the past they did not. Much new legislation has encouraged this and as legislation has been interpreted in the Courts, the power and the opportunities have grown.
One of the outcomes has been that a degree of favouritism seems to many people to have developed. It isn't unusual and there is reference to this "effect" in and on all media in all corners of the globe. In some places like Kurdistan and Northern China it has led to bloodshed and repression - down here, so far, it's just leading to confusion.
The confusion arises, it seems to me because RMA is a legal process and a very complex one. Local Councils are required to have extensive planning provisions operating in their districts and although RMA has been "with us" for two decades now it is still being interpreted and refined through the hearing and appeal processes.
In our sort of (Western) jurisdictions, legal processes hinge around evidence.
RMA processes, which essentially examine the proposition "is it OK to build a cement factory here" require extensive examination of evidence brought to bear on the decision makers (who are officers of specialist courts) by applicants objectors and supporters. In addition local councils and even government, can be involved as either objectors or supporters
When Holcim is seeking approval to discharge substances through its smokestack, it has to prove scientifically what is going up the smokestack, how much, when and where it is blowing to and where it might fall onto the ground. Then it has to prove scientifically through hard evidence, that these substances will not make the washing on the clothes line dirty or pit the paint on your car or make your cat or your children sick. Lots of numbers, lots of measurements, lots of hard won data, lots of experts and lots of money.
When Holcim seeks approval to deliver coal to the plant by train and take the cement away by truck, it has to measure noise and vibrations and air pollution and schedules and traffic hazards and the impact on roadside and trackside communities including psychological effects and phobias and fears.
When Holcim wants to mine coal it has to measure the ground and the streams and the hills and manage the run-off and the contours and the frogs and snails and it has to do this scientifically and in great detail and at huge expense.
When Holcim wants to build the factory it has to demonstrate the effect on the landscape the views the landform the trees the nearby houses and the roads and the way it will look when painted in any one of a range of "neutral or earth toned" colours.
Now by contrast, when a Maori wants to submit evidence (and we are talking about evidence here, not just an opinion or a fear or a myth) then fear, myth and opinion are accepted by the courts, as is hearsay, old wives tales and bedtime stories.
I'm not decrying all these mechanisms for passing on information and possibly even for transmitting facts in a society that had no written language until Captain Cook arrived, but as far as evidence in a court of law goes it is untenable, would never be accepted as evidence in a criminal court and unfairly biases the process away from Holcim who had no similar opportunity to "describe" to the court, what the good people of Switzerland "think" about cement production, or "feel" about it or describe how their ancestors might, if information passed down for 15 generations without ever having been written down is to be taken into account, view the use of a patch of rural land in the Waiareka Valley for a modern factory.
There seems to be no way out of this dilemma, to me, except for vigilance for the worst of the possible abuses!
