Dairy farmers who enlarge their herds on the assumption that Environment Southland will automatically approve their applications to discharge additional dairy effluent, may be in for a reality check.
This week the Council’s Consents Committee considered seven applications for consents relating to the discharge of farm dairy effluent and by the end of the meeting, councillors were very concerned at the complacent attitude some of the applicants had shown.
Chairwoman Diane Wilson said that a few clearly thought the consent process was “just a rubber stamping exercise” as they had lodged late applications and made inadequate provision for disposing of the additional effluent from their extra cows.
“Some of these applications were only lodged in August, when the farmers obviously knew a long time ago that they would be bringing in extra cows. One of the applicants was proposing to increase his herd size immediately, but only build the additional effluent storage ponds next April. That simply isn’t acceptable,” Cr Wilson said.
All of the seven applications were approved this week, but the Committee has imposed conditions on some of the consents that will require the consent holders to do work sooner than they had proposed. One consent was approved for just two-years instead of the more common 10 year term, because Councillors were unconvinced that the proposed effluent disposal system could meet environmental standards.
“We make our decision based on what we consider is best for the environment,” Cr Wilson said. “Farmers need to know that they can’t muck us around.”
Consents Manager John Engel said that farmers needed to be much more proactive, and understand that if they wanted to increase their herd size or needed to get a new consent, they would probably need to improve their on-farm effluent disposal systems.
“We want to encourage existing farmers to be aware that it’s time to look at their effluent disposal systems.
“Our monitoring has shown that many of the travelling irrigators currently being used can’t meet the required standards so farmers who are using the non-compliant systems will have to plan ahead.” Mr Engel said.
“We now require farms to provide either 60 or 90 days effluent storage, so that they aren’t trying to irrigate when the ground is too wet, and nutrients and bacteria are lost to the environment or effluent ponds on the paddocks and ends up running into waterways.”

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