The decision follows action by a local man Milan Ruka, who bought a boat and camera and began filming the pollution of waterways.

The Regional Council has said there is little it can do, despite pictures of dead cows, cattle grazing on unfenced river banks and stock drinking from streams.

However, Whangarei deputy mayor Phil Halse says his council leases riparian land to farmers in the Hikurangi drainage area and it has a reponsibility to look after it.

Mr Halse says the council will make it a condition of its leases that farmers must fence off the rivers.

He says if they no longer want to lease the land, the council will fence it off from their farms.

Mr Ruka says the council’s decision is commendable but says there are large reaches of the river outside council control.

He told Morning Report people have been in contact from all over New Zealand to ask how to help in his crusade.

Source: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/93327/council-to-act-on-cow-pollution-of-rivers

An Otorohanga farmer has been fined nearly $50,000 over unlawful dairy effluent discharge offences, while his herd manager faced fines of more than $10,000.

The case brought by Waikato Regional Council – and heard in Hamilton District Court before Judge Melanie Harland – concerned two events in March and November last year at a farm in Paewhenua Rd owned by the Gregan Family Trust.

Following helicopter monitoring by the council in November 2010 a ground inspection was carried out at the Gregan property. This inspection showed that effluent from a holding pond was deliberately being siphoned off to a nearby paddock where it was ponded in large volumes. Council staff also found that there was a substantial recent overflow of effluent from a second holding pond.

Through the course of the subsequent council investigation it was found that, in March 2010, a Fonterra contractor had observed a “river of effluent” overflowing from a storage pond and running down a hillside at the property.

The prosecution was based on the discharges from both the March and November incidents.

The judge found these discharges did not comply with the council’s effluent management rules and therefore contravened the Resource Management Act.

Defendant Terence Gregan, a trustee of the Gregan Family Trust, faced three charges in respect of both incidents, while herd manager Shane Rodgers faced two charges in respect of the November incident only. Both pleaded guilty to the charges.

Judge Harland acknowledged there was no direct discharge to waterways but said the real concern was the prospect of nitrogen from the effluent leaching into groundwater and ultimately affecting surface water health.

She found the overall effect of the offending on the environment was “moderate” and that it was impossible to say exactly what long-term damage would occur. “Nonetheless, the effects of discharges of dairy effluent which may result in leaching to groundwater are by their nature invisible and cumulative.”

The judge added Gregan’s behavior had been negligent, his approach slack and that in some respects his general attitude “reflected a complete failure to act responsibly”.

Gregan was fined a total of $49,875 and ordered to pay costs and fees of $245. Rodgers was fined $10,125 initially but this was subsequently reduced to a total of $2,000 after the judge accepted evidence about his “difficult” financial situation.

“This is a very clear message from the court that mismanagement of dairy effluent is seen as serious offending and exposes farmers to severe penalties,” said the council’s investigations and complaints manager Patrick Lynch.

“We were particularly concerned about the deliberate nature of this offending. It is disappointing to see a case like this when the dairy industry, as a whole, is working so hard to manage farm effluent responsibly and in light of the improved compliance results that we have been reporting recently.”

Source:  http://www.waikatoregion.govt.nz/Community/Whats-happening/News/Media-releases/Waikato-farmer-fined-nearly-50000-over-effluent-discharges/

Paul Warneford of Warneford Farms Ltd faced a charge after allowing an irrigation machine to discharge dairy effluent into a water way leading to the Nukuhou River, which flows into the Ohiwa Harbour.

Warneford was convicted and fined $26,000 by Judge Jeff Smith.

Maketu farmer Allan Titchmarsh was fined $24,500 following a charge of breaching an abatement noticed issued to him from the Bay of Plenty Regional Council and ordered to create an effluent management plan for his farm by January 31, 2012.

Titchmarsh has been at the centre of several offences relating to inappropriate disposal of effluent and was formally warned his failing to act on orders from previous court appearances was a contempt of court.

In another case, farmer Alexander Paul Atkinson pleaded guilty to a charge of allowing effluent to discharge in a way that it could enter water.

Atkinson, of Glenholme Farms, was convicted and will be sentenced on November 17.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10764869

Horizons has found the city council to be in breach of a condition in their consent which spells out there should be no significant adverse effects on the aquatic life in the river.

Compliance manager Alison Russell said that the issue in question had been brought to light following a benthic biota survey which looks at the river’s insect life up and down stream of the city’s discharge.

“There is a significant reduction in the type of insects in the water downstream of the discharge compared with upstream. This is a sign that water quality has declined to a point that it doesn’t support the same amount of aquatic life as further upstream in a short stretch of the river.”

Horizons Regional councilors heard from Horizons officers about the issue at their strategy and policy meeting today.

Councillors agreed to establish a joint working party between the two council’s governance teams to oversee the management and resolution of the issue.

“This matter is of concern to all involved and we need it to be put right for the sake of our river,” said Horizons Chairman Bruce Gordon.

“We are focused on achieving this outcome for the community. There is a high degree of public interest in this matter and it’s important that it is addressed as a matter of urgency.

“The city council have always dealt with any issues relating to their consent swiftly and I’m confident they will work to resolving this issue as quickly as possible.”

Ms Russell acknowledged the efforts PNCC has put into addressing its non compliances in the past.

“Palmerston North has made a considerable investment to upgrade their waste water treatment plant since 2003. There have been issues from time to time but these have been reported to us and acted upon quickly. This current matter is about the effect the discharge is having on the river’s ecosystem.”

Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1110/S00286/city-council-asked-to-sort-it-out.htm

http://ecan.govt.nz/services/online-services/Pages/consent-search.aspx

If consent holders do not have a copy of their consent or do not know their consent
number they should call Customer Services on 03 353-9007 or 0800 324-636.
More information about water measuring services, approved installation companies
and the implementation of the National Regulations can be found at:

http://ecan.govt.nz/watermetering

http://www.mfe.govt.nz/rma/central/measuring-reporting-water-takes.html

The deadlines for installing water measuring systems are:
Date Take size
10 November 2012 20 litres/second or more
10 November 2014 Between 10 and 20 litres/second
10 November 2016 Between 5 and 10 litres/second

Source: http://www.localgovt.co.nz/includes/download.aspx?ID=7378

Large capital investment may be required by farmers and irrigation companies to meet efficiency targets.

Six resource consents have been granted to the Upper Waitaki Community Irrigation Company for an unusually short period of five years.

The company had asked for 35 years.

During the five years, the efficiency of the scheme is be investigated and a plan put in place for improvements.

The panel was critical of the efficiency of the existing scheme, despite the company proposing improvements.

The criticism was of both the delivery of water and on-farm use.

At the same time the panel acknowledged making improvements would “potentially require significant investment and time” by the company and its farmers.

The company for 40 years has used water from Lake Waitaki to irrigate 1925ha on the south side of the Waitaki River between Kurow and Duntroon.

The renewal process had been going on since 1999 and involved a hearing process which started in September 2009.

In the consent, the panel also reduced the annual volume of water from the 26.3 million cubic metres applied for to 22 million cubic metres between August 15 and May 30 each year.

The scheme uses 30km of race, 9km of pipes and predominantly border dyke irrigation.

The company has 62 shareholders (irrigators), but most of the water is used by three major dairy farms.

The panel said the application raised the issue of efficient distribution and use of water.

The company acknowledged that needed to improve.

It put forward a three-step proposal over 12 years.

The proposal started with a monitoring programme to identify weak points in distribution and identify water demand and requirements.

The final step would review what had been done and continue plans to reduce the amount of water needed.

Making improvements would involve significant expenditure and disruption to farming operations and would need to take place outside the irrigation season, the company said.

However, despite the proposal from the company, the panel’s view was it had done little to improve water efficiency.

“Nor has it provided evidence that it is taking a responsible attitude to its use of water and is seeking to continually improve the technical efficiency of the use of water,” the panel said.

It put conditions on the consent requiring the company to introduce on-farm efficiencies, including individual farm and scheme environmental management plans.

The short-term consent period of five years, the panel hoped, would act as an incentive to the company to urgently undertake steps to improve efficiency.

The panel is Christchurch lawyer Paul Rogers (chairman), environmental consultant Mike Bowden (Kaiapoi), cultural authority Edward Ellison (Otago Peninsula) and water quality consultant Jim Cooke (Wellington).

Source: http://www.odt.co.nz/regions/north-otago/180312/consent-conditions-deliver-clear-message-irrigators

The comments follow a report from the office of the Auditor-General that says regional councils are not doing enough to prevent the degradation of fresh water by dairy farms, and councillors are getting in the way of prosecutions taking place.

Environment Minister Nick Smith says the Government will consider a suggestion by the Land and Water Forum to appoint goverment representatives.

But the principal adviser at Local Government New Zealand, Michael Reid, said that would alter the constitutional nature of regional councils in particular and require changing the Local Government Act.

“It confuses the constitutional separation between central and local government, so it would be a really big, precedent-setting measure.”

Mr Reid said it would be preferable for firmer guidelines to be introduced for councils on how they deal with infringements.

Prosecution decisions

Dr Smith said that although the amount non-compliant dairy farmers can be charged has doubled and the number of prosecutions has trebled in the past three years, the Auditor-General’s criticisms are accurate.

He told Morning Report the bigger problem lies in rural areas, but there are problems in urban areas too, such as the Palmerston North City Council which has failed to comply with its resource consent for its sewage scheme.

“I’m receiving advice as to whether we should do a formal inquiry into that specific example, and the reason is to try and give clearer guidance, because regional councils are not getting this business about when to prosecute correct.”

A Palmerston North City Council wastewater plant has repeatedly exceeded the amount of pollutants it is allowed to discharge into the Manawatu River since it opened in 2003.

Listen to Nick Smith on Morning Report

Report’s findings

The report looked at four councils: Waikato, Taranaki, Horizons in the Manawatu Whanganui area, and Southland.

It concluded that Waikato and Southland were not doing enough to prevent damage by dairy farms.

The report gave Taranaki Regional Council the best write-up, saying overall it is maintaining and, in places, improving water quality.

The Manawatu regional council was keeping up water quality standards in the Rangitikei and Whanganui River catchments, but not for the Manawatu River.

Assistant Auditor-General Bruce Robertson says a real area of concern at all four councils was the involvement of councillors in deciding whether to prosecute farmers.

He says these matters should only ever be dealt with by independent council staff.

The executive director of environmental group Ecologic, Guy Salmon, was one of those who peer reviewed the report and says the main reason councils are failing to keep the nation’s lakes and rivers clean is that most are run by farmers.

He says regional councils are also failing to even introduce policies to keep lakes and rivers clean.

Waikato regional council chair, dairy farmer Peter Buckley, disagrees that councils are not doing enough and says his council has processes to deal with the issue.

He says councillors like to have a say on whether prosecutions proceed and make certain that the process is correct, because it’s their neck on the line if a bad decision is made by staff.

Mr Buckley says his council has prosecuted other councils in its jurisdiction and has also cut non-compliance to around 10%.

The Auditor-General’s report does, however, say the Waikato council needs to devote more resources to monitoring, noting that at present it is visiting just a quarter of the region’s farms.

Southland Regional Council chair Ali Timms would like to see the instant fine the council is permitted to impose on dirty dairying practices increased from $1000 to $5000.

Ms Timms told Morning Report that the instant fine usually shocks farmers into remedying the problem but an increased penalty would be more effective.

Listen to more on Morning Report

Government inspectors suggested

An OECD expert on water pollution and farm runoff says the New Zealand Government could look at using farm inspectors and reducing stocking densities to control water pollution.

A policy analyst from the OECD’s trade and agriculture directorate, Kevin Parris, told Nine to Noon that overall water quality in New Zealand is high but intervention is needed to keep it that way.

Stocking limits could be imposed in certain catchment areas where even the best practices can not stop pollution.

Alternatively, he says, society may decide to “give up” on a particular river or lake and let it be polluted because there’s an economic benefit.

Listen to more on Nine to Noon

Source: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/86714/appointees-to-safeguard-water-quality-’a-step-too-far’

The Otago Regional Council’s compliance team carried out 810 audits of 718 activities and reviewed 2335 consent conditions for performance monitoring relating to 697 consents in the 12 months to June.

The audits revealed two areas of concern – water meter installation and discharge and water takes.

Environmental services manager Martin King said in a report to the council’s regulatory committee the level of compliance found with discharge and water take consents was “of concern”.

Of the 358 consents monitored, only 38.3% fully complied with their consent conditions.

“Of concern are the 91 consents that were found to have potential effects on the environment.”

The 25% non-compliance related to poor performance of effluent systems, poor effluent quality going into the environment, air quality discharges not being met, offensive and objectionable odour going beyond boundaries and water takes being outside of the consented area, Mr King said.

Where grade four and five non-compliance (potential to affect environment) was identified, the council had sought written explanations from the consent-holder and asked for remedial action plans where needed.

Council group manager regional services Jeff Donaldson said the audits also showed some meters had not been installed correctly and in some cases it resulted in some consent-holders not sending their installation certification in on time.

The audit showed 11 consent holders were fully compliant (grade 1) while eight were graded between two and four (the worst being five).

Consent-holders needed to remember they were liable for any issues with faulty installation, not their installer, Mr Donaldson said.

They were required by resource management regulations brought in last year to install water meters and depending on the amount of their take, they had from November next year to 2016 to do so.

Source: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/176400/91-breaches-could-affect-environment

A Pukekohe poultry breeding farm company, T Good Limited, has been fined $42,000 after a “lahar” of chicken effluent ran from the property and contaminated a nearby stream.