Cashmere Bay at Lake Brunner is one of the areas affected by mapping errors. Photo: CC BY 4.0 / Mike Dickison
Relief is in sight for a number of West Coast property owners who found their land had been mistakenly captured in mapping errors for sites of significance to Māori in the proposed Te Tai o Poutini Plan (TTPP).
The errors are mainly around Paroa Lagoon, affecting parts of Gladstone, and at Cashmere Bay on Lake Brunner.
Poutini Ngāi Tahu had asked that those sites only extend to the waterway and foreshore.
However a number of private properties had been mistakenly included and the owners advised to make a formal submission on the plan to request their properties be removed.
Principal planner Lois Easton said they did have provision under the Resource Management Act to fix minor errors without having to go to a hearing.
These were:
- Corrections to mapping errors where some sites were omitted from the e-plan maps but were shown on the hard copy maps and included within the schedule;
- Corrections to mapping errors where the wrong shapes were shown on the maps.
Iwi representative Paul Madgwick* asked at the TTPP Committee meeting on Thursday if it was possible under that legal advice to safely put through minor amendments relating to the sites of significance at Paroa Lagoon and Cashmere Bay.
Easton said she was "quite comfortable" with that approach.
"Poutini Ngāi Tahu would be quite happy to put those as minor amendments - which would be a huge relief to a lot of submitters," Madgwick said.
Easton noted the problems related to map omissions, translation of data, and the scale of mapping - all related to the GIS mapping system used by the regional council.
Madgwick said the minor amendment provisions would allow them to rectify unintended errors where the maps had gone "haywire and inadvertently roped in private properties away from the water's edge".
* Disclosure: Paul Madgwick is also the editor of the Greymouth Star. He took no part in the commissioning, writing or editing of this LDR story.