Auckland water strategy supplementary document.

Extract from the Executive summary

Auckland continues to face significant stormwater challenges related to historical development, as well as increased growth and redevelopment of its urban area. The Auckland Plan 2050 identifies that urban development and effects of climate change (including inundation and increased flooding) will have the biggest impact on the region’s environment. The Plan also acknowledges that the state of Auckland’s marine and freshwater environments are declining due to, amongst other things, poor water quality.

For a number of years now a water sensitive approach to stormwater management in Auckland has been required, to varying degrees, to address these effects. Most notably, it has been used in greenfield areas, areas with high contaminant loads (e.g. roading), areas upstream of sensitive urban stream environments, and for stormwater assets to be vested to council. Over the past two decades, and more recently through the Auckland Unitary Plan process, Auckland Council has made significant progress around the promotion of water sensitive design through the integration of land use and water planning, and the council group continue to develop and implement work programmes to further this progression. In relation to this, Auckland Council Group is developing the Auckland Water Strategy to provide clear strategic direction to the council group’s activities for 2021-2050 to address the identified challenges. The vision for the Auckland Water Strategy is ‘te mauri o te wai o Tāmaki Makaurau, the life supporting capacity of Auckland’s water is protected and enhanced’. The Auckland Water Strategy proposes that council adopt eight overarching strategic shifts. Improving the integration of land use and water planning has been identified as being essential to achieve Auckland’s vision of protecting and enhancing the life supporting capacity of our waters - te mauri o te wai o Tāmaki Makaurau. This report provides information in support of strategic shift 6 ‘Integrated land use and water planning’ via a water sensitive design (WSD) lens. It identifies gaps and barriers to, and opportunities for, the holistic and widespread implementation of WSD to support the delivery of te mauri o te wai o Tāmaki Makaurau.

Various terminology related to WSD has been defined and best practice WSD approaches are discussed in Table 1 of the main report. The discussion considers WSD implementation at the site, neighbourhood and catchment scale, and relevant WSD case studies are provided.

The report has also investigated barriers to the wide-spread implementation of WSD in Auckland, with specific reference to Auckland’s current planning framework. ...

List of Auckland water strategy supplementary documents:

Assessing the mauri of infrastructure and water

Investigation of barriers and opportunities to further implement water sensitive design in Auckland

Mauri-enhancing infrastructure case studies

Why water infrastructure should be mauri-enhancing

See also

Auckland Council website

Auckland water strategy 2022-2050

Auckland water strategy implementation plan 2022