A comparison of environmental legislation and regulation in New Zealand and the United States.

Introduction

In recent years, New Zealand has received increased international publicity, in part because of the success of The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, which was filmed in New Zealand. The beautiful landscapes that appear in the film to be untouched by environmental degradation, drew special attention. Even before the recent publicity, New Zealand was perceived by many as being a nation that promoted environmental protection more than many other developed nations. In an announcement at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in January 2006 in Davos, Switzerland, the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranked New Zealand first out of 133 countries in the areas of health, biodiversity, energy, water, air, and natural resources, with the country earning 88 out of 100 possible points. The U.S. ranked 28th, with 78.5/100 points, behind many developed nations, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain and even behind some countries that may be considered to be developing, such as Malaysia and Columbia. The Pilot 2006 EPI study was conducted jointly by the Yale University Center for Environmental Law & Policy and the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Center of the European Commission (Yale University Environmental Performance Index, 2006.)

One travel Web site (www.gokiwihotels.com/trade) even promotes New Zealand as "a magic place where the air is clear and the water runs fresh and pure from the mountains to the sea" (Go Kiwi, 2005). This claim raises the question: How does New Zealand's environmental health compare with that in the United States? Is the air truly clearer and the water more fresh and pure? While the answer may ultimately be difficult to determine, this article will compare New Zealand's environmental legislation and regulations with those of the United States in an attempt to gain insight into the environmental policies and practices of both countries.

During the spring of 2004, author Tim Kelley was granted a William Evans Fellowship from the University of Otago to support travel to New Zealand during sabbatical from his duties as director of the Environmental Health Program in the Department of Health Sciences at Illinois State University (ISU). The purpose of his travel was to share his experiences in microbiological, chemical, and physical water quality issues related to wastewater management with academicians and environmental protection representatives in New Zealand. At the University of Otago School of Medicine and Health Sciences Ecology and Health Research Center, one of his primary fellowship hosts was then-director Dr. David Slaney, who is currently a senior scientist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, Ltd. Slaney co-authored this article.

Before Kelley traveled to New Zealand, the New Zealand (N.Z.) Ministry for the Environment (MfE) had identified onsite wastewater management as a primary potential area for this sharing opportunity. This area of study includes the treatment and disposal of wastewater generated in areas where a centralized collection, treatment, and disposal system is not available (e.g., rural areas without access to a sewer system and central wastewater treatment facility). During his visit, Kelley met with and discussed water quality issues with academic colleagues at the University of Otago, representatives of MfE and the Ministry of Health (MoH), the N.Z. Water Environment Research Foundation (NZWERF), and the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, Ltd. (ESR). Through the information and insight provided by these discussions, he gained a better understanding of N.Z. environmental protection, especially with respect to water quality issues.

Kelley had, since 1997, served on the Illinois Private Sewage Disposal Commission, whose role is to make recommendations to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), and he had taught the course Waste Management Practices for the ISU Environmental Health Program since 1999. Therefore, he had prior experience both in the training of students (who would become regulatory-community or private-industry environmental health professionals for onsite wastewater management) and in the politics of bringing together community stakeholders in relation to this issue. Local and regional stakeholders included the regulatory community (local health departments); private contractors (system component manufacturers, sellers, and installers); public and private environmental protection groups (the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and Prairie Rivers organization, respectively); realtors; IDPH representatives; and others. Kelley's experience also included serving as coordinator of a contract awarded from IDPH as a part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) grant to IDPH to implement and evaluate U.S. EPA's proposed Level 3 guidelines for onsite wastewater management. He serves as an active member on the interdisciplinary ISU Livestock and Urban Waste research team, focusing on developing viable, economically feasible treatment solutions for agricultural and municipal waste disposal and reducing related water quality concerns.

In New Zealand, as in the United States, demand for water for all purposes is increasing. New Zealanders value water for many reasons, including economic (irrigation and industry), environmental (maintenance of ecosystems that rely on streams and groundwater), health (water supply and safe swimming), cultural (indigenous Maori mahinga kai, or food gathering area, and mauri, or life force), and recreational (fishing, boating, and canoeing). New Zealand's low population (just over four million people) and limited industrial base, relative to the United States, mean that the current pressures on freshwater ecosystems are less severe than those in many other industrialized countries. Among the greatest impacts in New Zealand on water quality are agriculture and related horticulture activities (Slaney & Weinstein, 2004). An important and highly charged issue in New Zealand is the debate concerning dairy farming and the degradation of New Zealand's waterways and groundwater aquifers. Both of these water sources have declined in quality; this decline and the increased demand for freshwater are two of the most significant environmental issues facing New Zealand today. On a global level, New Zealand has good-quality drinking water, with the most common health problems associated with drinking and recreational freshwaters, as is the case internationally, arising from microbiological contamination of the source waters (Slaney & Weinstein, 2004).

Comparing New Zealand's approach to environmental health protection with that of the United States can provide a different perspective on environmental issues and provide valuable insight into the American approach to these issues. The insights provided from the differences in points of view may ultimately help both New Zealand and the United States to better understand and perhaps modify their approaches to environmental health protection.

A Brief Comparison of Environmental Statutes in New Zealand and the United States

The N.Z. Environment Act

The 1986 N.Z. Environment Act (EA) roughly corresponds to the 1969 U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), in that it establishes the N.Z. Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and its associated minister, which are similar in structure and function to the U.S. EPA and its director. The 1986 EA also created the associated Office of Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The commissioner, a member of the N.Z. Parliament, is appointed for a five-year term to provide an independent check on environmental management systems and their performance (including other ministries and public agencies). While the NEPA requires environmental-impact assessments before projects are undertaken that would significantly affect the environment, New Zealand's Environment Act requires that the minister be advised concerning significant public- or private-sector environmental impacts. As the NEPA did before it, the EA established a framework for both previous and future environmental statutes.

The N.Z. Conservation Act

The 1987 Conservation Act established the Department of Conservation in New Zealand. This act is an important environmental statute, including protection of natural resources. The N.Z. Department of Conservation might be considered to be roughly equivalent to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Other acts related to creation of reserves and national parks are outside the scope of this article.

The N.Z. Resource Management Act

New Zealand's 1991 Resource Management Act (RMA) could be said to roughly correspond to the 1980 U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), although the scope of the RMA is much broader, extending further into the areas of air, water, coastal environment, biodiversity, and land use planning; RCRA focuses primarily on waste disposal and related land use issues, such as municipal solid waste and hazardous waste landfills. Therefore, the RMA could be interpreted as integrating elements of the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1970, the 1972 Clean Water Act, the 1974 Drinking Water Act, and other U.S. legislative acts. The RMA was modified in 2003 to include amendments reducing compliance costs, simplifying national environmental standards and policy statements, and strengthening national heritage provisions, among others.

Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act

The 1996 N.Z. Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act also has elements in common with the U.S. RCRA in that it controls the import, manufacture, use, and disposal of hazardous materials to protect not only humans, but also the environment. The HSNO Act also has some commonalities with the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1980, with similar focus on cradle-to-grave tracking of hazardous materials. In addition, New Zealand passed the Radiation Protection Act in 1965 to cover radioactive material and the Ozone Layer Protection Act in 1996 to address ozone-depleting substances (see the next section of this article, below). The HSNO Act obviously also addresses the issues of genetically modified, non-indigenous, or other "new" organisms and their control, and was amended in 2002 to cover genetically modified organisms. The concern with new organisms was also reflected in the New Zealand Biosecurity Act of 1993, with its efforts to limit introduced "pest" species to New Zealand. Since New Zealand is an island nation (albeit a large one), with millions of international visitors each year, this issue is an important one.

New Zealand Global-Impact Legislation

The Ozone Layer Protection Act of 1996 is of particular importance in the southern hemisphere, since the ozone hole over Antarctica allows increased ultraviolet (UV) light penetration to New Zealand, New Guinea, and Australia. Depending on exposure levels and protective measures, the increased UV light exposure may increase a resident's risk of developing skin cancer.

The more recent N.Z. Climate Change Response Act, passed in 2002, further reflects a commitment to environmental protection related to global-warming concerns; it allows New Zealand to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and continue to meet obligations specified by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A group of nonbinding multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), including those agreed to at the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, further demonstrate New Zealand's strong commitment to global environmental responsibility.

The N.Z. Local Government Act

The Local Government Act of 2002 updated a 1974 act and affects many other acts because of an increased local-government emphasis on environmental issues in New Zealand. This situation may be seen as roughly comparable to the many U.S. state acts related to environmental issues in the United States.

Further information concerning N.Z. environmental laws and the history of their development is available at http://www.mfe.govt.nz/laws/ and in Van Roon and Knight's Ecological Context of Development: New Zealand Perspectives (2004).

Specific N.Z. Statutes Related to Water Quality Issues

As indicated previously, the 1991 RMA is probably the strongest statute related to water quality issues in New Zealand. The RMA provides that anyone seeking to use water must be authorized by a resource consent from the regional authority or by a rule in a regional plan (not all uses are restricted--e.g. individuals' domestic use is not restricted); furthermore, the RMA requires that discharges of contaminants must be authorized by a resource consent, rule, or regulation.

A primary difference in theory (although perhaps not so much in practice) between environmental legislation in New Zealand and the United States is that N.Z. legislation is not mandatory at a national level. Instead, the national legislation provides a framework for environmental protection, and the regional governments (councils) determine the specific requirements and associated penalties for noncompliance. In practice, it could be argued, this arrangement often works the way legislation works in the United States, since in the United States individual states do retain some latitude in the enforcement of federal environmental legislation. The N.Z. approach, however, allows significant latitude in environmental requirements and penalties related to the different topographic regions, climes, and population density of New Zealand, which may vary dramatically within relatively short distances, relative to the United States.

Environment-Linked Strategies

Since the 1960s, New Zealand's drinking-water supplies have been considered suspect. In the early 1990s, a quarter of the supplies surveyed failed the microbial standards set at the time, and a number of communities were advised to boil their water. This situation prompted the government to respond via the Ministry of Health (MoH), which undertook a program to improve water quality management. The program included the review of management procedures and legislation related to drinking-water supplies, and it involved the publication of the Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality Management for New Zealand, the 1995 Drinking Water Standards for New Zealand (DWSNZ), and the Register of Community Drinking-Water Supplies in New Zealand (MoH, 2005). The latter is updated each year; water suppliers are contacted according to water quality standards criteria. The 1995 DWSNZ, which details the maximum concentrations of chemical, radiological, and microbiological contaminants acceptable for public health in drinking water, was revised in 2000 and 2005, and the associated guidelines are currently being amended. Over the years the MoH program has resulted in a significant improvement in the quality of water supplies and the information available to the public on drinking water.

New Zealand has a number of other environment-linked strategies (Ministry for the Environment, 2005; Van Roon & Knight, p. 12). For example, MfE's Hazardous Waste Management Programme was established in 1997 to review and develop management tools for improving the management of hazardous waste. MfE is working to incorporate the principles and tools outlined in its Guidelines for the Management of Hazardous Waste into a national hazardous waste management policy. Another example is the development of national environmental standards for air, water, and land, not only to protect the environment, but also to reduce associated health risks.

Conclusion

What is the answer to the difficult question posed in the Introduction? Does New Zealand indeed have better environmental health than the United States as a result of better design, enforcement, and acceptance of environmental legislation? Several differences between New Zealand and the United States make comparisons difficult. First, it should be recognized that the size of New Zealand (about 270,000 square miles, or roughly the area of Colorado) and its population (about four million, with over one million in Auckland) are comparable to those of a U.S. state rather than the entire United States. The fact that New Zealand is an island creates a sense of isolation, as in other island countries such as Japan and Great Britain, and therefore perhaps an increased emphasis on preserving its environment. Finally, New Zealand's grassroots approach to environmental issues, with many important decisions being made at the local or regional level rather than the national level, allows for more flexibility and creativity than is possible in a nation as large as the United States. National and international debate is ongoing concerning the results of the Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which ranked New Zealand first among 133 nations evaluated while the United States ranked 28th. New Zealand is certainly not the relatively untouched wilderness seen in The Lord of the Rings movies, but New Zealand and the United States are both populated by many responsible citizens who are proud of their countries and want to preserve their extensive natural beauty as well as the health and well-being of their inhabitants.

Corresponding Author: Tim Kelley, Professor and Director, Illinois State University, Environmental Health Program, 5220 Health Sciences Department, Normal, IL 61790. E-mail: [e-mail].

REFERENCES

Go Kiwi. (2005). Go Kiwi hotel pass directory [Web site]. Retrieved March 27, 2006, from http://www.gokiwihotels.com/trade.

Ministry for the Environment. (2002, 2004). Guidelines for the management of hazardous waste. Retrieved March 31, 2006, from http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/waste/hazardous/guidelines.html.

Ministry for the Environment. (2005). Hazardous wastes. Retrieved May 27, 2006, from http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/waste/hazardous.

Ministry of Health. (2005). Drinking-water in New Zealand. Retrieved May 27, 2006, from http://www.moh.govt.nz/water.

Slaney, D., & Weinstein, P (2004). Water and human health. In J. Harding & P. Mosley (Eds.), Freshwaters of New Zealand (pp. 46.1-46.14). Christchurch, New Zealand: The Caxton Press.

Van Roon, M., & Knight, S. (2004). Ecological context of development: New Zealand perspectives. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.

Yale University Environmental Performance Index. (2006). Pilot 2006 environmental performance index. Retrieved March 27, 2006, from http://www.yale.edu/epi/.

Tim Kelley, M.Ed., Ph.D.

David Slaney, Ph.D.