Review of Hawke's Bay Regional Council Monitoring Networks

Details

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council operates an environmental monitoring network for the following attributes:
1) Weather and climate
2) River stage and flows
3) Groundwater levels
4) Groundwater quality
5) Coastal water quality
6) Recreational water quality
7) Surface water quality and freshwater ecology
8) Land and wetland science parameters
9) Soil quality
10) Air quality

A review of the of the HBRC environmental monitoring network is required to ensure it is fit for purpose, while optimising expenditure to provide best value for money.

The review will proceed in 2 parts:

Part 1 will deal with the HBRC environmental monitoring network:
1) Summarise the existing HBRC environmental monitoring network purposes and identify additional purposes for the environmental monitoring network. Scenarios for changes in resource management or other matters that may modify the network purposes in the next 10 years must be identified.
2) Produce an optimal design for the core HBRC-managed environmental monitoring network to meet the network purposes.
3) Identify the relative benefits and absolute costs associated with any proposed changes to the existing network.

Part 2 will deal with the potential for use of non-HBRC monitoring data:
4) Consider whether there are potential benefits from including alternative sources of environmental monitoring information.
5) The costs associated with managing and providing these alternative sources must be identified.

HBRC are prepared to consider a range of methodologies for the assessments. The proposal should include a detailed description of the intended methodology and clearly identify how it will achieve the project objectives.

The output from this review will be a report including the methodology used, assumptions, results and limitations.