Coastal water quality monitoring - Northland
Review of coastal water quality monitoring in the Northland Region
Northland Regional Council (NRC) is responsible for managing the near-shore coastal marine area (CMA) of the Northland Region. This area follows the coastline from Kaipara and Mangawhai harbours in the south, to Cape Rēinga in the north, as well as extending from mean high water springs to 12 nautical miles offshore.
The Northland CMA is important for its biodiversity and cultural values. It also provides for a wide range of human activities including recreation, mahinga kai/food gathering, commercial activities (fishing and tourism) as well as the aquaculture industry.
NRC has a broad coastal monitoring programme which provides information to assist in the management of the CMA. As part of this programme, NRC monitors physico-chemical and microbiological water quality at a selection of coastal sites on a regular basis. This monitoring provides data on a wide range of water quality characteristics to support assessments of ecosystem health and provides essential data to inform management to support the wide range of values and activities in the CMA. This monitoring forms part of NRC’s coastal state of the environment (SOE) monitoring.
Proposed coastal water quality monitoring sites (NRC)
Recent national policy developments such as the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 NPS-FM) have required regional councils to create freshwater management units (FMU’s) to assist in implementing the policy statement. NRC has identified a suite of FMU’s, all of which drain to the CMA. As part of implementing the NPS-FM, NRC saw an opportunity to review its SOE coastal water quality monitoring programme to ensure that it is robust, consistent with recommended best practice, and can suitably inform its management of activities which may impact coastal water quality.
NRC was successful in securing an Envirolink Advice Grant (2204 NLRC227) to undertake the review and contracted NIWA to provide expertise. There were several key areas of focus for the review:
- Identify if there was sufficient spatial coverage across existing monitoring sites in the CMA to assess the impact of freshwater inputs on coastal water quality;
- Consider how the monitoring programme will help NRC give effect to the NPS-FM, in particular Policy 3 and Section 3.11 (integrated — ‘source to sea’ — management);
- Comment on whether the monitoring sites, variables and methods are fit-for-purpose to assess the effectiveness of the Proposed Regional Plan for Northland (PRPN) for managing coastal water quality and be able to assess compliance against the water quality standards in the PRPN.
NRC Coastal Scientist Richard Griffiths says the work has provided some key recommendations which are being progressively adopted as resource allows. Richard explains that NRC needed some independent eyes and expertise to look over what we had been doing and the Envirolink grant has provided the mechanism for NRC to engage NIWA to provide this. Richard says “As a result of this work, we have now modified our programme in some areas to improve our monitoring network to ensure its fit for purpose”.
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