What makes the Hutt River great and how do we improve it: Hutt River Environmental Strategy review

With over one million people visiting each year, the Hutt River has more visitors than any of our regional parks. Its riverbanks provide tremendous opportunities to create and maintain a wonderful environment and provide opportunities for recreation and leisure.

To make sure we can continue to do so Greater Wellington Regional Council is leading a review of the current strategy that guides our management and development of the riverside, the 2001 Hutt River Environmental Strategy. This will be done in collaboration with Upper Hutt City Council, Lower Hutt City Council, iwi, stakeholders and the wider community.

So far we’ve surveyed users of the riverside and we’re now starting to talk to stakeholders such as utility providers, recreational and environment groups.

Thanks to all those that took part in our survey. Your thoughts have been added to the draft report.

What we have found so far

As a first step of this review, a user intercept survey of the Hutt River corridor was carried out. 960 people were surveyed between the Hutt River mouth and Harcourt Park from March through to early April 2016.

The purpose of the survey was to identify how the corridor is used and by whom, what they currently think about it and what they want in the future. The survey was designed to allow replication at a future date and measure change overtime.

The key findings from this user survey were that:

· Water quality improvement (through the management of algae) was the top management priority identified by users of the corridor;

· The majority of respondents considered the corridor to be the same or better than when they first visited;

· The longer the experience in the river corridor, the more respondents felt the corridor had changed for the better, particularly with regard to access, planting and recreation amenities;

· Those that believed the river corridor had worsened overtime primarily attributed this to algae, lower water levels in the river, and rubbish; and

· The level of perceived conflict between uses is low overall, with 4% of respondents experiencing a negative interaction.