The forum, a collaborative group of industry groups, environmental and recreational organisations, iwi and scientists, tasked with advising the Government on freshwater and land management recently released a report providing a "national framework within which regional councils will work with their communities and iwi to set freshwater objectives and develop limits for its use".
Council chairman Stephen Woodhead described some of the report at a recent committee meeting as "scary stuff".
Direction given on possible collaborative processes could "undermine the core values the regional council works with", he said.
An aspect that stood out was the provision for all groups to take part in a collaborative process but, if they did, they gave up their right of appeal - a concept chief executive Graeme Martin found "abhorrent".
Another was the use of independent commissioners with Environment Court or higher qualifications on regional plan panels.
"They seem to believe this process would be quicker and cheaper but all this talk about High Court judges ... they're in cuckoo land."
He had "deep concerns" about the paper and he hoped the ministers considering it would not support all its aspects.
Mr Woodhead said the idea that, through a collaborative process, everyone would have a "group hug and at the end all agree" was "impractical and ridiculous".
Cr Duncan Butcher said it seemed the forum had been "hijacked by bureaucrats" who saw the role of an elected regional councillor as being of "no use whatsoever".
"It gets away from any accountability to the public and sets up a process outside the RMA [Resource Management Act]. It shoves the responsibility off to some other group to pull it together in an ad hoc way."
It seemed they would then give the plan to the regional council to rubber stamp, he said.
"It's absolute nonsense when people are elected to do the job of the RMA.
"There is no accountability."
The council had successfully used a collaborative process throughout its proposed water plan changes but the hard decisions had to be made.
Under the forum's collaborative approach, when that time came, it was likely the collaborative approach would "go out the door".
"With no regional councillors involved to make the hard decisions, it'll become stalemated," Cr Butcher said.
Cr Gretchen Robertson said she did not think people were "lining up" for another step to be added to the plan processes, especially a "costly, frustrating" step.
Mr Martin suggested the forum's report and its "workability" could be discussed in greater detail at the next round of committee meetings.
Councillors recommended that be done.
