Environment Waikato has now ready to prepare an amendment to the Regional Coastal Plan that would allow new types of marine farming, which includes fish farming within current aquaculture management areas. After two years of hard work gathering information the authority has comes up with new changes. Under the current marine farming chapter of the plan, written in 1999, shellfish farming is the only type of aquaculture allowed in the region.
Environment Waikato policy committee chair Paula Southgate informed that Environment Waikato had carefully considered the positive and negative impacts of fish farming over the past 18 months. She told that they wanted to be sure they had plenty of robust scientific studies on the environmental impacts before contemplating a plan change.
According to her the proposal scored very well for economics, which was reflected by the enthusiasm of the industry, central government and development agencies. However lessons from overseas had shown that poorly managed fish farms could cause significant environmental damage. As fish farming is more intensive than shellfish farming and involves feeding and potentially the use of medicinal compounds, the ecological effects can be much greater than shellfish farming.
Paula Southgate explained that the committee has carefully drafted plan change providing for development of a small amount of fish farming on a trial basis in the existing aquaculture marine areas should be sustainable. It is told that Environment Waikato’s policy team will begin drafting the proposed plan change immediately and will be consulting extensively before presenting a draft to council around March next year.
