Report 9 - Executive Summary

Stormwater Monitoring Programme

This Report was prepared by Alison Davis, Aristos Consultants for Waitakere City Council. It briefly outlines EcoWater's obligations to invest in monitoring and research to ensure that money spent on stormwater management is efficient and effective. It also outlines a number of other obligations, including the following:

• To ensure that it has resource consents to discharge stormwater into aquatic environments, which require that there is sufficient monitoring to determine that there are no adverse effects on aquatic environments from the discharge of stormwater
• To ensure that adverse effects on aquatic environments are avoided or mitigated, which requires monitoring of the environmental state of the City's streams and coastal areas
• To ensure that people and property are protected from the effects of flooding, which requires monitoring of stream flow levels.

The issues, parameters, methods, indicators, performance measures and sampling strategies for coastal-estuarine environments, streams, and stormwater effects (i.e. flooding) are outlined for the stormwater management units. This includes the types of issues monitored and the locations and frequency of sampling undertaken. The cost of implementation, with predicted costs over a ten-year period is also outlined.

Monitoring of stormwater treatment devices and general stormwater monitoring and their cost implications, are covered in the report, with examples of data monitoring field data sheets and score sheets for use in stream habitat assessment being provided. There is a section on monitoring and research programmes, including current or recently completed investigation on stormwater management carried out by Waitakere City and long-term monitoring programmes on aquatic ecosystems with the City.

The section on the proposed stream monitoring programme for Waitakere City, presents a priority order for streams for ecological monitoring, the appropriate methods for monitoring streams for stormwater effects, those streams requiring low flow water level monitoring and the key parameters for assessing stream ecosystem health.

Various habitat assessment methodologies are outlined along with their relevant strengths and weakness for local use.

In addition to the ecological, physical and chemical data sampling outlined in the report, the need for gathering additional information, such as catchment land use changes, water body or riparian ecological surveys, social surveys related to stormwater and water body management and stormwater management practices and development (nationally and internationally) is suggested. The report also recommends that a monitoring steering group be set up to help track changes over time (i.e. in the condition of water bodies) and to set goals and priorities for stormwater management (i.e. establishing sampling protocols, overseeing and reviewing programme design and implementation).

Report 9 - Full Version

Stormwater Monitoring Programme
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