Council disputes ‘D’ grade

An environmental group’s fail of Horizons Regional Council’s dirty dairying monitoring is being blamed on insufficient data instead of actual poor practice.

Forest and Bird released a report yesterday that used information from every regional council in New Zealand to assess how dairy farm effluent management was monitored during the 2016-17 financial year. The environmental group rated every council, with Horizons getting a D. Only Waikato, with an F grade, and Southland and Auckland regional councils, both E, rated lower.

Forest and Bird’s main problems with Horizons were farm monitoring, inspection notice and enforcement action. The enforcement issue came about from farms found to be seriously non-compliant with consents for significantly longer than in other council areas. Serious non-compliance can come from a range of issues, including inadequate maintenance, effluent spills, and unburied dead stock near or in water.

According to information given to Forest and Bird by the council, there was enforcement action against only 31 per cent of the 26 farms with serious noncompliance problems. That action can range from an abatement notice, ordering actions to be taken or stopped, through to an infringement notice with a fine. The most serious action is prosecution in court.

However, Horizons chief executive Michael Mccartney said Forest and Bird’s information was incomplete, party because of the questions asked by the group. Other groups often went to the council after compiling a report to check numbers were right, but Forest and Bird did not, Mccartney said.

Horizons strategy and regulation group manager Dr Nic Peet said the council had at least given an abatement notice to every seriously non-compliant farm, which were subject to an unannounced visit weeks after enforcement action was taken.

However, Horizons did accept that it had done consent monitoring on only 58 per cent of the 938 dairy farms under its umbrella in 2016-17. It also gave farmers between 24 and 48 hours’ notice before undertaking inspections.

Forest and Bird freshwater advocate and report co-author Annabeth Cohen said monitoring all dairy farms was key to ensure any serious non-compliance was found. Horizons was one of few councils to give more than 24 hours’ notice about inspections.

‘‘With too much notice, farmers could change practices to make the situation look better than it might be if inspectors showed up with less notice,’’ Cohen said.

The report only looked at serious non-compliance, which Cohen said was ‘‘the worst of the worst’’. Undertaking enforcement action against every seriously non-compliant farm would show rules must be followed, and not doing so came with consequences, she said.

Peet said the notice period used to be about a week but was pulled back. Giving notice ensured the person in charge was there to speak about any issues.

Every dairy farm would get a visit within two years, but resources were concentrated on the farms that either did not comply, or had known risks, such as old equipment, he said.

Mccartney said the council’s eight compliance officers had to manage more than 5000 consents across farming, industries and wastewater treatment plants.

The report found only 5 per cent of dairy farms had significant non-compliance problems, so a balance had to be struck between hassling good farmers every year and finding the issues, Mccartney said.

There was enforcement action against only 31 per cent of the 26 farms with serious noncompliance problems.