The admission by Northland Regional Council (NRC) followed a report by Forest & Bird released yesterday that it says shows regional councils throughout New Zealand were not properly enforcing rules around dairy effluent management.
A total of 5000 dairy farms throughout the country were not inspected for dairy effluent compliance in 2016 and 2017.
Forest & Bird said 919, or 40 per cent, of the country’s total reported cases of serious non compliance cases in recent years were in Northland.
«While Northland Regional Council monitored 100 per cent of the dairy farms in the region and conducted a follow-up visit to all seriously non-compliant farms, it did not show consistency with enforcement,» the report said.
Forest & Bird said 79, or nearly half, of the seriously non-compliant farms in the region had a history of serious non compliance.
Twenty five of those farms had a serious non compliance three years in a row and eight of these farms didn’t receive any enforcement action at all last year, it said.
For 166 farms in serious non compliance last year, Forest & Bird said 209 actions were taken against 118 of the farms. «For some reason, nearly 50 farms did not receive any formal action. That is 29 per cent of seriously non-compliant farms that received no infringement, abatement or prosecution action.
«This is very concerning, given that ‘serious non compliance’ is reserved for instances where environmental damage has occurred or has the potential to occur. In 75 cases, effluent ended up in Northland waterways in 2016-17.»
Forest & Bird said while one farm received 12 enforcement actions, not one serious non-compliant farm was prosecuted.
NRC group manager regulatory services Colin Dall said unlike other regions that spread their monitoring throughout the dairy season, NRC-monitored farms from mid-August through to early December when effluent loadings were highest and farm systems under most stress.
He refuted claims by Forest & Bird that eight farms in Northland were not followed up, saying NRC carried out a follow-up visit to all of significantly non-compliant farms which the reported mentioned.
However, Dall said Northland’s compliance rates lagged behind some of the other regions and cited a number of reasons including monitoring of dairy farms for about four months only.
«Visits are not pre-notified in Northland, unlike some other regions. All discharges to water in Northland are sampled, unlike some other regions.
«The NRC monitors all aspects of the farming operation covered by the relevant resource consent or rules, including stand-off pads away from the dairy, dead-stock disposal and discharges from silage storage.»
Dall said Northland’s high rainfall and soil posed additional challenges for farm dairy effluent management.
«We believe our overall monitoring programme is extremely robust and identifies actual problems which enables us to work proactively with our farmers to address and improve many of the issues contained in the Forest & Bird report.»
Federated Farmers Northland dairy chair Ashley Cullen said he hasn’t read the report but said the region was generally doing a good job in terms of monitoring dairy farm effluent.
By: Imran Ali
Source: NZ Herald
Link: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/article.cfm?c_id=16&objectid=12106176
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