Red tape in the red zone: How a ’quick win’ to expand a wetland was thwarted by environment rules

Saturday, 26 April 2025

The environment is winning a slow war against the ruins of the Christchurch red zone, and officials are keen to help. One obstacle? Regulations designed to protect the environment. CHARLIE MITCHELL reports.

All that remains of this cul-de-sac near Horseshoe Lake is cracked asphalt sinking into the mud.

Goodman St in east Christchurch was red zoned after the earthquakes. It fared worse than most; it is just a couple of metres above the water table and surrounded by rivers and streams, including the Avon. Now, the road has slumped, and regularly ponds with rainwater — so much so that parts of Goodman St now meet the legal definition of a wetland.

Like much of the red zone, nature has re-asserted itself in the space people left behind, waging a slow war against the abandoned infrastructure.

This natural process is key to the red zone’s future, as outlined in the Christchurch City Council’s regeneration plan. It calls for expanding the Avon River floodplain and returning the area from manicured lawns and a banked waterway to the swampy marsh it once was. Horseshoe Lake is destined to become a stormwater management area, surrounded by ecologically-restored habitat.

The plan was simple: connect the emerging wetland to a nearby tributary (the Old Lake Outlet), expand the habitat for native species and naturalise the waterway. To do this, the council would remove a culvert and replace the weeds and exotic grasses with thousands of native plants. Then it would add a gravel walking and cycling path to connect to nearby trails, inviting people back into a landscape long abandoned.

Staff described the project as “relatively minor and straightforward” and a “quick win” for the area — a much-needed sign of progress in the dormant, deserted red zone.

Instead, it has taken nearly three years for the project to even start. This despite no public consultation requirements, no affected residents and clear environmental benefits.

Getting permission became so difficult that the project was scaled back. But it still came in at an unexpectedly high cost, and with a consent application that swelled to nearly 400 pages. All to detail how earthworks in an area smaller than a quarter of a rugby field would not harm an already degraded environment.

It’s a pattern repeated throughout the red zone: Minor projects are faced with red tape, resulting in delays and cost escalations, which ultimately spurred the council to submit its red zone regeneration plan for consideration under the Fast-track Approvals Act, a law the council has criticised.

An analysis by The Press of the barriers facing one small project shows how environmental regulations — which the Government is pledging to overhaul — can, in some cases, become a barrier to environmental improvement.

The quick win that wasn't

In 2022, the council was hunting for ways to make visible progress in the red zone.

The Goodman St project ticked all the boxes. It was small, could be finished quickly and was in an area with no major works proposed. It had a clear environmental payoff. And much of the work could be done under the council’s global resource consents, which allow certain activities by default.

But it was soon evident the win would not be quick.

Connecting the developing wetlands to the tributary was a non-starter.

That year, Environment Canterbury (ECan) had its controversial decision to allow decades-old consents to be repurposed for water bottling quashed by the Court of Appeal.

This led to its equally controversial interpretation of that judgment that any works encroaching into groundwater — difficult to avoid in the red zone — was considered a water take and thus prohibited.

“We learned via the design and consenting phase that the excavation to make these connections would seasonally intercept groundwater, making it a prohibited activity,” the city council’s residential red zone manager, Dave Little, said.

The council shrunk the size and depth of the planned wetlands and ditched the tributary connections.

Instead, it would connect the existing ponds with shallow scrapes. Doing so would “still provide a useful ecological function”, Little said, “but the benefits will be reduced from what we had initially hoped to achieve”.

Even with the reduced scope, the earthworks needed resource consent because they exceeded the amount allowed under the council’s global consents. And so the council set off on a lengthy process.

Any resource consent application must align with a patchwork of local, regional, and national plans. This can be complicated in any circumstance, but the red zone poses particular challenges.

The clearest paradox involved the paved remains of Goodman St. Despite being a decaying, disused street only filled with water after rain, it meets the legal definition of a natural wetland because it formed naturally — albeit due to earthquakes.

This meant national rules to protect wetlands kicked in. The council would have to prove that its project to expand and naturalise a wetland would not damage a wetland. That extended to its intention to remove exotic grasses — weeds — growing through the cracks of the road surface.

Another problem was contamination. Nearly all land in the red zone is deemed potentially contaminated, because there is no way of knowing what former residents might have done: Someone may have scraped lead paint from their house or spilled oil while working on a car.

This meant expensive and time-consuming soil testing was needed on Goodman St.

The construction of a footpath and a small bridge also needed consent. That included permission to use treated timber for the piles, which technically qualifies as a discharge of contaminants into water.

A consenting labyrinth

In February 2023, council staff sat down with planners at ECan to discuss the proposal — standard procedure given ECan would be the decision maker for several of the required consents.

The applications, however, would not reach ECan for another year.

Preparing for the project had become a project in itself. The council had to develop a Preliminary Site Investigation (PSI); an in-depth Detailed Site Investigation (DSI); a consenting strategy; and an Assessment of Environmental Effects (AEE) with various technical reports.

It brought in environmental consultancy Boffa Miskell, which subcontracted several other specialists. One drilled for contaminated soils, finding minimal contamination. An archaeologist found nine archaeological sites within 500 metres of the site, but none within it. The council’s lizard survey did not find any lizards.

Still, the council favoured caution. Previous work had tested the asphalt for coal tar, a once-common road ingredient now recognised as potentially toxic. The results on Goodman St were inconclusive — the council would therefore assume it was present.

Before work began, a freshwater ecologist would wade through the Old Lake Outlet searching for native kākahi (mussels). A “suitably qualified and experienced biosecurity project manager” would supervise weed removal.

During the removal of the asphalt, a contaminated land specialist would supervise earthworks, while an ecologist would oversee work near the waterway. Both would ensure compliance with a detailed Construction and Sediment Management Plan (CSMP).

If at any point a lizard was seen on-site, work would stop, and the project’s herpetologist would be notified. The person who saw the lizard must make detailed notes including the date and time, weather conditions, a description of the lizard, and, ideally, GPS coordinates. If the lizard was injured, it must receive veterinary attention within one hour.

When council staff finally submitted their application, it totalled nearly 400 pages with 16 appendices. The process undoubtedly delayed the project: “It’s tricky to split out the design from the consent preparation, as it’s an iterative process,” Little said. “But we estimate the consenting process added around 12 months.”

Mercifully, ECan dealt with the matter quickly. It granted the consents within a couple of months, concluding that any adverse effects would be “no more than minor”.

Construction could finally begin in early 2025, three years after the “quick win” was first proposed.

Fast-track

The Goodman St saga is not an isolated case. It embodies the challenges facing the entire red zone restoration.

Last month, a tidal wetland connected to the Avon River was completed on what used to be Waitaki St. It is part of a larger project to convert the area into a stormwater reserve.

It was plagued by similar issues. The consent application came in at a door-stopping 988 pages and took about 18 months to be processed by ECan.

It is understood the city council was anticipating going through the same process for each individual project, certain to come at a significant cost.

The frustration within the council is evident, particularly with smaller projects like Goodman St. But red zone boss Dave Little is diplomatic. “We have found the planning rules to be a challenge to implementing the wetland aspects of the Regeneration Plan,” he said.

It is why the council submitted its red zone plans for consideration under the Fast-track Approvals Act.

The law has been controversial, largely for its potential to override environmental protections. The city council itself was among the critics: In its submission on the law it said it was “very concerned” about the “lack of consideration of adverse environmental impacts through the decision-making process”.

Nevertheless, the red zone work has secured a place on the short-list.

The council appears to see its red zone plan as an exception— that unlike some proposals, the red zone regeneration will come with significant environmental benefits. “We don’t advocate for earthworking without due diligence,” Little said.

Such was the case made in its application for fast-tracking. With apparent exasperation, the Goodman St project was cited as one of many facing “considerable consenting costs and complexity”.

“This is not an uncommon situation,” the application continued, “and leads to a perverse situation where ecological benefits are reduced by the planning mechanisms that are meant to protect them.”