A new situation involving large-scale rapid gravel extraction has led the Otago Regional Council to look at its fixed fee for its monitoring services.
Gravel extraction from rivers was usually low level, intermittent, site specific and required a resource consent, chief executive Graeme Martin told the council.
The funding policy for gravel extraction monitoring costs required 100% cost recovery and a single fee of 65c a cubic metre.
However, with large-scale rapid events in gravel-abundant rivers, the 65c charge was "potentially manifestly excessive", as in the Makarora River and the Shotover Delta instances where gravel needed to be extracted for river management purposes, he said.
The council agreed to add a caveat to the policy to prevent "manifestly excessive cost recovery" and approve a caveat that where more than 10,000cu m of gravel was extracted within a notified continous two-month period, the actual inspection and management fee be charged.
