Building Act Review – Other Issues, Safety Regime for Dams

Responses To Ministry of Economic Development (MED) with NZSOLD views.

Cabinet Paper

This paper can be interpreted in different ways and has caused some confusion amongst our executive. As a result of the earlier discussions with the DIA and your department and reading the paper, our interpretation is that the Minister has supported the findings of the DIA review for implementation rather than the Cabinet paper produced in July 1998. This current DIA proposal as far as we understand does not include a Warrant of Fitness regime but does require the Regional Councils to carry out periodic review to ensure that owners have ongoing surveillance systems in place. Could you please confirm that this is the correct interpretation?

Definition for Dams

In previous submissions we resisted the imposing of thresholds and promoted the NZSOLD guidelines approach using Potential Impact Classification (PIC).

The general opinion of our Executive is that a mandatory PIC is required for dams retaining more than 6metres or storing more than 50,000 m3 of water. There should also be scope for this threshold to be lowered if the consequences of failure of a particular structure would be unacceptable to the public.

For the purposes of the proposed regime we would suggest the following

• As a definition “A dam is a barrier which is constructed for the purpose of enabling the storage or diversion of water, or water containing any other substance”.
• The legislation should require Building Consent for dams retaining more than 3 meters, or storing more than 20,000 m3 of water, or water containing any other substance.
• The legislation should also require dams retaining more than 6 meters, or storing more than 50,000 m3 of water, or water containing any other substance, to have a PIC. There should also be scope for this threshold to be lowered if the consequences of failure of a particular structure would be unacceptable to the public.

Guidance to Regional Councils for Impact Classification

There was general agreement of the Executive that the NZSOLD guidelines should be used for Potential Impact Classification.

Time for Implementation

The range of responses from the Executive varied from 2 to 3 years. It is considered that the Regional Council representatives may be in a better position to answer this question.

Considering that an inventory for a large proportion of dam structures could be compiled fairly quickly from existing lists it is suggested that a 6-month period be allowed for inventory compilation, and a further 2 years for implementation.

The inventory would essentially be a living document and could be added to as the need arises.

Implementation Issues

All responses from our Executive raised the issue of finding adequately qualified resources to implement the regime. The issue of cost and cost recovery was also seen as important. Other issues included the potential for an inconsistent application of the regime by different Regional Councils, dispute resolution, identification of owners and linkage with other legislation.

Our earlier submissions argued that many of the current dams in NZ were compliant and to gain a sign off on their current monitoring regimes would require little effort/cost for the Regional Councils. NZSOLD is interested in promoting a streamlined implementation process to avoid undue cost and effort for owners that have compliant systems already in place.

Consistency and an effective dispute resolution process are issues that are apparent but may not be easily resolved at this stage of the process. It was considered that the resolution of these issues may require ongoing input from all sectors of the industry and time to resolve.