Effluent dumps

In reply to your stock effluent article (Effluent dumping sparks plea from council, Waikato Herald, May 12).

As a livestock operator that covers from the top of the North Island to the lower Waikato, I find this article not quite accurate.

In 1997, there was a working group set up to help eliminate the amount of effluent that was being spilt on the roads.

The group was set up by the roadcontrolling authorities to bring together all the appropriate industry groups.

This was made up of the Road Transport Forum, Fed Farmers, Meat Industry Association and the Stock and Station Agents Association.

The only party that has done what was expected of them from the group is the transport sector by fitting holding tanks to all our trucks as standard practice and part of our Transport Assurance Programme that all the meat processing companies require us to comply with. We have been involved in a lot of surveys on where sites need to be, but nothing ever seems to actually happen.

This has actually created the issue of requiring effluent dumps so we can empty them.

Your article lists the six effluent sites that are currently available in the greater Waikato region.

That is nowhere near enough for the movement of livestock in the region and they are not always open. It’s a long way from the top of the Coromandel and Raglan to any current sites and that’s if you are actually going near them.

Not all the meat processors have effluent disposal facilities and neither do sale yards, which is where a lot of the livestock is sent.

If the trucks can’t empty their tanks at the destination when they unload it creates a major problem for them.

When the stock and station companies introduced live weight selling, this compounded the issue as well with farmers not wanting to stand livestock prior to trucking so they would weigh more at the sale. Same-day kill at the processor also has the same impact.

If every party in the chain played their part, especially the farmer by standing their stock for a minimum of at least 4-12 hours prior to collection, it would go a long way to help eliminate the problem.

Don Wilson Onroad Transport Ltd Pukekohe