Resource consent non-compliance an ongoing issue

Environment Canterbury is actively working with dairy industry partners to improve the management of dairy effluent on Canterbury farms, as highlighted in the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord Snapshot of Progress report for 2008/09.

Environment Canterbury has also today released figures relating to resource consents held by territorial authorities, which show a significant level of major non-compliance.

“There is recognition from all involved in the dairy industry that work is needed to improve the levels of dairy effluent compliance and reduce non-compliance,” said Alec Neill, Environment Canterbury Chair.

“Unfortunately, we are not seeing the same recognition from territorial authorities that their level of resource consent non-compliance is a serious issue that needs addressing.”

In the six months ended June 2009 10.3% of major non-compliant consents, identified by Environment Canterbury monitoring, were held by territorial authorities. In the previous six months this figure was 11.5%, with at least one major non-compliance issue in six of the 10 Canterbury territorial authorities over the year.

“This is a serious issue as the territorial authorities are responsible for much of the water and wastewater infrastructure for our towns and cities.”

“Territorial authorities have called for the scrapping of Environment Canterbury and have suggested this would somehow improve water management.

“The territorial authority major non-compliance figures show they have some way to go to get their own houses in order. It is not acceptable for Canterbury’s local bodies with a legislative RMA role to have ongoing issues of major non-compliance.

“Our approach with the dairy industry, however, has been to form a combined regional council-industry group to work collaboratively on improving the level of dairy effluent compliance.”

This group – formed in October 2009 – includes Environment Canterbury, Dairy NZ, Federated Farmers, Fonterra, NZ Dairies, and Synlait.

“We are working on a range of initiatives with industry partners to achieve improved environmental outcomes and compliance levels for dairy effluent discharges.”

• These initiatives include:
• Working directly with effluent system providers to ensure systems have the right capacity, are installed properly.
• Improved training for dairy staff through training days, information packs, and liaison with industry training organisations.
• Demonstrations and displays on how to improve dairy effluent environmental outcomes at farmer/rural events and fieldays.
• Direct communication with farmers on how to avoid minor non-compliance issues such as not having consents displayed as required.
• Advertising aimed at farmers celebrating good practice in dairy effluent management. By providing good local role models other farmers are encouraged to improve their practices and systems.
• A review of standard dairy effluent resource consent conditions.

“As a result of these initiatives, we look forward to an improvement in dairy effluent compliance levels,” said Cr Alec Neill.


For more information: Cr Alec Neill 0274 403 731.
For report: http://www.maf.govt.nz/mafnet/press/2010/180310-dairy-clean-streams.htm