Environment Canterbury: New commissioners take over

14 May 2010 01:47p.m.

Helen Isra wrote:

New Website Empowers ECan Democracy - ECan In Exile Following the removal of our Canterbury regional councillors and our democratic regional voice, some of us decided to do something to help empower us Cantabrians to maintain our regional democracy. We have put together a website type blog called ECan in Exile which contains many tools, guides and resources to help citizens uphold and promote the restoration of our regional democracy. We've submitted it for Google indexing and would now like to get it linked into as many related high traffic sites as possible. Please have a look at our site here: http://ecaninexile.wordpress.com ..and if you like what we've done please link us from your website. PS: some google searches to the ECan in Exile (or ecaninexile) site are coming up as 404 page not found - just ignore this message and click the HOME tab on the website Regards Helen "In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes."

27 Apr 2010 09:02a.m.

Annabel wrote:

Its all very sad and worrying. ECan have done alot of good work which was brushed over in the report - a report which was provided late; perhaps because the first draft showed them in a light which was too good and didn't meet the political agenda? ECan has made alot of efforts to improve and it looks like the credit for this will now be taken undeservedly by 'someone' else. Meanwhile other regional councils remain ominously silent on the subject. Perhaps worried that if they say anything, they will be next for the axe? ECan is a test case - don't think that silence means safety.

26 Apr 2010 09:27a.m.

Luke Saoirse wrote:

WATER PLAN BY JUNE: Nice of Nick Smith to hand his commissioners a quick run on the board. Nick has said he wants an ECan water plan by June but if you look at ECan regional water plan progress reports you would see that it is due in August anyway. No doubt Nick will take a big bow for all the hard work and innovative thinking that the likes of ECan CEO, Bryan Jenkins, Ex ECan Planning Policy Director and the 8 new ECan councillors have put in over the last 2 years of this ECan administration. Amazing what a so called 'dysfunctional organisation' can achieve isn't it. Also their is rumour around the business community that the ECan water plan management group tried to provide the Creech Report investigators with evidence of this great progress but the investigators refused to receive the evidence - the feeling being they only wanted the bad news. Perhaps Dame Margaret can ask Wyatt Creech next time she sees him at the Fire Service Commission, after all he is her deputy chair at the commission. Meanwhile we are still awaiting the MfE's National Policy Statement for freshwater 19 years after National passed the Resource Management Act in 1991.