9.5 Where to from here?

Monitoring

The Northland Regional Council will continue to monitor the water quality and vegetation of lakes in the network. Once there is three to four years of data for each lake we will be able to identify trends in water quality. This will allow us to recognise which lakes are improving, degrading or not changing at all. With this information we will be to able to focus on preventing lakes from degrading any further or look at options for improving water quality in lakes.

Weed management

The Northland Regional Council is currently looking at controlling and, where possible, eradicating aquatic weeds and pests in high value and/or high risk lakes. The council has started establishing aquatic weed control programmes in three Northland lakes using different control methods. These include two Aupouri lakes (Lakes Heather and Ngatu) and one on the Pouto Peninsula (Lake Swan). For more information check out Case study 1.

Policy documents

Regional Water and Soil Plan changes

The council is currently reviewing rules in the RWSP pertaining to discharges and land disturbance. This review will lead to ‘proposed plan change 2'. This will incorporate rules for stock exclusion from water bodies of significance, including selected lakes. The council intends to notify ‘proposed plan change 2' in early 2008 for submissions.

Lake management

The council has started a review of the RWSP implementation. As part of this review it has been identified that the council is lacking a document which prioritises and identifies actions for the management of Northland's lakes. It is likely that this review will recommend the development of a Lake Management Strategy or similar document for Northland, which sets out action plans for all significant lakes in Northland.