D_004 — No practitioner interview: SQ4 is a de jure analysis
Decision
The SQ4 permitting deliverable does NOT include a practitioner interview. (Project decision, 2026-07-15 — no time for a practitioner engagement in the research window.)
Rationale
- SQ4 is a de jure question. It asks “what legal, policy, planning and locational requirements must be addressed” — which is answerable from the enacted law, and that law is now fully read (the primary-backed spine, REG_006–019). An interview would have added de facto praxis (“how consenting actually goes in practice”), which is a different, complementary question SQ4 does not ask.
- The cost is a bounded, declarable limitation, not a hole in the answer. The deliverable is a legal analysis, not a practitioner study — a standard and defensible scope for a Masters permitting analysis.
- Time. The research window does not allow an ethics-scoped external engagement for this limb.
Consequence — four RTs re-dispositioned
The interview was the closing route for four open questions. Each is now handled as follows (none is left as a false “someday-interview” item):
| RT | Question | New disposition |
|---|---|---|
| RT_333 | Does a run-of-river diversion face the low-flow ban, or a residual-flow condition? | Document-answerable, not interview-dependent — a regional plan’s rules (HBRC RRMP / ORC RPW / GWRC NRP) settle it. Left open as a low-priority document target, not pursued now. |
| RT_345 | Does the LUC-3 “other than rural lifestyle” mapping-exclusion give a non-Māori-land route onto good soil? | Declared limitation — a legal-interpretation question needing practitioner/MfE-guidance judgement; flagged, not resolved, in the deliverable. |
| RT_349 | Does a common house break the shared-domestic-supplier drinking-water exemption? | Partly document-answerable — Taumata Arowai guidance may address it; otherwise a declared limitation. Not pursued now. |
| RT_351 | Is a residential eco-community a “workplace” under HSWA? | Declared limitation — an HSWA/WorkSafe-guidance judgement; flagged, not resolved. |
Net: RT_333 and RT_349 remain cheaply document-answerable if ever wanted; RT_345 and RT_351 become declared limitations of the deliverable — legal-interpretation questions that a legal analysis can frame precisely but not settle, which is itself a legitimate research contribution (they identify where the law is genuinely unclear for this use case).
Implications
- The deliverable: gains an explicit “Limitations” subsection naming the de jure/de facto boundary and the two unresolved interpretation questions (RT_345, RT_351). This strengthens the work — it shows the boundary of what a legal reading can establish.
- What is NOT lost: the requirements answer (the whole point of SQ4) is complete. Only the praxis colour is out of scope.