Freshwater Audit

The Marlborough District Council is confident it can comply with all the recommendations made in a report from the Auditor General’s Office into freshwater quality.

The report examined water quality in four regional council areas, not including Marlborough, finding that while water quality is good by international standards, it is also deteriorating.

The report calls for more standardised methods of reporting water quality.

“Freshwater is a highly valued commodity within Marlborough and we have an advanced monitoring regime in place. Our monitoring does not suggest that our water quality is deteriorating. In fact, our last results indicate that water quality in most locations remains generally unchanged while in some cases like the Rai and Pelorus we have actually seen some improvement,” said Council Environment Committee Chairman Peter Jerram.

The report recommends that regional councils and unitary authorities review their methods of reporting monitoring results and develop better processes for responding to those results.

“We already have an extensive monitoring programme which more than meets the requirements and we report the results regularly, including making them available on our Council website. Nevertheless we will conduct a review of our current practices as directed by the Auditor General’s Office to confirm we comply with best practices,” said Councillor Jerram.

The District Council does a five-yearly ‘State of the Environment” report and that material forms part of the consideration of our own district plan review processes so there is a defined process for ensuring that water quality is properly addressed in our planning, he said.

“We’re very confident we can demonstrate good practices here in Marlborough.”

The Auditor General’s report is critical of the strength of the local body regulatory regime particularly relating to the handling of prosecutions and has called for those procedures to be reviewed.

“In Marlborough we have tended to work by encouraging farmers to work toward compliance, rather than by taking a punitive approach, and we have made steady progress. For example, the Council’s initiatives to eliminate stream crossings by dairy herds in the Rai and Pelorus have paid dividends with some water quality parameters there showing pleasing results,” said Councillor Jerram.

The last Council audit of dairy farms pointed to continuing improvement and, earlier this year, there were only 10 dairy farms where action was still urgently required.

The Auditor General has also recommended that elected councillors, particularly rural councillors, should not be members of any Council committee or panel determining prosecutions. Currently two Marlborough District Councillors sit on such a subcommittee but that practice will now have to be reviewed.