No embargo on tribunal’s decisions

Press, 5 September 1983, Page 22

No embargo on tribunal’s decisions

Reports from the North Canterbury Catchment Board’s standing tribunal will not be sent to applicants and objectors before its recommendations were made public, the board has decided.

A resolution that applicants and objectors, be advised of the tribunal’s findings at the same time as committee members was rejected by the board. Earlier, the board heard that a water-right applicant first learnt of the tribunal’s recommendation that the application be declined by reading a report in “The Press.”

Mr H. G. and Mrs P. M. Innes plan to build an alpine resort at Flock Hill and had applied for permission to discharge sewage into the ground above Lake Pearson.

It would have been polite and a courtesy to have

informed them earlier, said a board member, Mr O. J. Osborne. Mr T. N. D. Anderson said the board needed to adopt a reasonable practice. He suggested the report be embargoed until the applicants were informed. Other boards did it and the board has done it in the past, he said.

Dr B. P. J. Molloy said the applicant was entitled to appear at the committee meeting which was open to the public when the report was presented. The board’s chairman, Mr M. J. O. Dixon, said there were precedents where the board had overturned the tribunal’s recommendations. A decision on an application was not made official until passed by the board. Only then was it appropriate to inform the applicant, he said. The board’s chief execu-

tive officer, Mr E. R. Wood, said that releasing the report to applicants would be of no benefit to them.

“It is important that people see not only the decision but the decision being made. The public and the news media want to see the decision-making process,” he said. The board rejected Mr and Mrs Innes’s application. Building Government moves to lower interest rates have reduced the cost of the North Canterbury Catchament Board’s building programme $50,000. The board intends to raise a $200,000 loan tb finance the addition of 75 sq m of office space to its Worcester Street headquarters. Board members were told that interest rates on the loan had dropped from 13.5 per cent to 9 per cent. Repayments on the loan

over eight years would now cost $50,000 less.

The extension of the top two floors out to the western boundary of the site would accommodate an extra 15 to 20 staff and meet the board’s office needs for at least five years. Construction is expected to take about three months. Flood protection Work on the Cass River and Cust River flood protection schemes would begin next month, the board was told. The chairman of the board’s operations committee, Mr R. B. Johnson, said that $1.4 million would be spent over the next five years on the schemes. Work would include strengthening the riverbanks, construction of stopbanks, and a drainage cul,vert, widening of river channels, and the removal of willow trees.