| Pollution: Dirty Dairying | |||
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| Dirty Dairying Cow numbers have exploded in the South Island. There has been a 300 per cent increase in cows in the South Island in the last 10 years, and milk solid production is up by 400 percent. One cow produces as much faeces as 14 people. The current numbers of cows in the South Island are producing as much sewage as 10 million people. Dairy cows cause an enormous amount of water pollution during stream crossings and by effluent run-off. Dairy farming requires intensive use of nitrate fertilizers. This raises the level of nitrates in streams and ground water. Wells, some farming families are drawing water from, have so much nitrate in them that they are unfit for human consumption. This is as much a human health issue as it is a mainstream environmental issue. The majority of rivers that flow through dairying areas have faecal coliform levels that make them dangerous to swim in. The effluent and nitrates in the streams cause undesirable weed growth and in low water conditions this deoxygenates the water and kills insect life and fish. Cows also break down the river banks which causes sedimentation of waterways as silt is washed down, clogging up aquatic insect habitats.  Photo courtesy Adrian Bell Fish & Game Position 1. F&G want the dairy industry and Regional Councils to get out of denial mode and recognize that there is a major problem and start implementing solutions. 2. The solutions are well known. With the big milk cheques currently rolling in at the farm gate now is the time to repair and prevent further damage, by fencing cows out of streams, undertaking riparian planting, and putting in culverts at stream crossings. 3. Regional Councils are as much to blame for the state of the country's lowland rivers as are problem farmers. Regional Councils know there is an environmental catastrophe in progress but they are reluctant to demand and uphold the necessary environmental standards. 4. In many cases it appears that the elected members actively support dairy farming expansion and irrigation, when they should be taking a neutral position given their role as a consent authority. 5. The responsibility for this state of affairs lies fairly and squarely with the dairy farming industry which causes it, and with the Regional Councils that are meant to police the industry's activities and look after the country's waterways. 6. The industry needs to openly acknowledge it has a major problem and urgently show the public of New Zealand that it has a timetable to clean up its act. And Regional Councils need to impose and monitor tough resource consent conditions on farming operators and take a much harder line on farmers who do not adhere to them. 7. The Ministry for the Environment needs to audit Regional Council performance on the maintenance and restoration of water quality, especially of lowland waters that flow through pastoral and cropping land. The million dollar fighting fund. The million dollar dirty dairying-fighting fund is a cause for concern, I really think that it is not the right approach. If you have not heard about it, it is a fund set up by Fish and Game, from our licence fees to combat bad practices in the dairy industry. The theory is if you take an offender to court and win, a precedence is set and other instances of bad practice are dealt with accordingly. It is not just anglers that want clean unpolluted streams, farmers also need them as do the rest of New Zealanders. In the future farming is going to be increasingly under scrutiny by a highly critical and vocal consumer lobby for using the best of animal husbandry practices and causing minimal environmental damage. Compared to Europe and North America, where farming and industry has extensively damaged lowland rivers, New Zealand still has relatively little damage, but with the massive increase in dairying going on at present that is set to change. Remedial work to clean up polluted streams, which is now being tackled in Europe and North America, is horrendously expensive, now is the time to act in New Zealand before too much damage is done. What brought this to a head for me was a debate that has been going on now for a few months in Rural News, a fortnightly newspaper delivered to farmers. The debate is over the million-dollar fund, and lately has got rather acrimonious, it is usually front page and has included an editorial, it is mainly between Bryce Johnson, the director of Fish and Game, and Alistair Polson, the president of Federated Farmers. Alistair Polson and the ex-president of Federated Farmers, Malcolm Bailey, are of the far right flavour in politics and anything that comes in the way of farming and of farmers earning as much as they can is unacceptable. I think theirs is an extreme view, not shared by the majority of farmers, most of whom have a genuine concern for the environment, for example, the stream health monitoring kit that I mentioned last month was developed by NIWA, but funded by the North Canterbury branch of Federated Farmers. The problem with having this debate in a farming paper is that many farmers would perceive Fish and Game and anglers as antagonistic towards farming. Anglers are very much dependent on the good will of farmers for access to both high country and lowland rivers, this is a very delicate arrangement and we don't need anything that rocks the boat. There has been a suggestion that the million dollar fund would be better spent on fencing off some of the at risk rivers, unfortunately a million dollars would only fence off a small river and tributaries, and this is the crux of the problem, fencing off rivers from stock over the whole country is going to be very expensive, in excess of half a billion. Converting a farm from grazing to dairying is an expensive business, but fencing off any rivers or streams on the property would only add slightly to the overall conversion cost so it would seem reasonable that this should be a mandatory part of conversion. Fencing off streams on established farms is much more of a problem. If a farmer could get additional tax relief for fencing off streams, this may help in a small way, and at no direct cost to the government, or if the government were feeling particularly generous a grant in aid to pay part of the cost would help. One thing is certain though, now is the time to do it, for two reasons, firstly, before there is any more damage to our streams, and secondly, farming returns have never been better, dairying is in a boom and sheep and cattle prices have never been so good. Fencing off streams is only one part of the solution, extensive sections of the fenced off streams will need tree planting to counter erosion, provide cover for the fish and encourage invertebrate life. This is an activity that angling clubs could get involved in, there would be no costs involved just a bit of time invested. Setting a legal precedence is one way to tackle a problem, but in this case I think it is the wrong one. This is a problem that farmers and anglers should be tackling together, rather than squabbling over, and getting on finding a solution that is acceptable to both groups. St.John Wakefield Wairarapa farmers prosecuted 7 February 2002 Two Wairarapa dairy farmers were convicted in the Environment Court on Friday for discharging dairy effluent into streams. Wellington Regional Council prosecuted the two farmers under the Resource Management Act for illegally pumping effluent into the streams last year. Graeme Charles Warren of Dyerville was convicted and fined $5000 plus costs of $465 for pumping over one million litres of effluent into the Okoura stream in January 2001. Mr Warren had hired a pump in a do-it-yourself bid to save the cost of hiring a contractor to spread the effluent onto land. John Richard Nicholls of Kaiwaiai was convicted and fined $4000 plus costs of $1797 for pumping untreated effluent over four days into Stonestead stream during August 2001. Mr Nicholls, who was selected Southern North Island regional winner of the 2001 Westpac Trust Kiwi Dairy Farmer of the Year, had disconnected the hose of his effluent irrigator and placed it in the stream because a replacement pump was having trouble driving the irrigator. Council Planning and Resources Manager, Steve Blakemore, said the Council took the farmers to court to help reinforce New Zealand's image of clean green farming. 'The Regional Council is generally happy with the way Wairarapa farmers manage their effluent, but will not tolerate illegal discharge of effluent into waterways. The Regional Council is required to uphold the law and protect the environment and will take enforcement action against offenders.' Water samples taken show that in both cases, the downstream water was unfit for aquatic life to live in and for stock to drink. In both cases, the illegal discharges were brought to the Council's attention by other dairy farmers concerned with their environment. Both farmers pleaded guilty. The cases were heard before Judge CJ Thompson in the Environment Court in Wellington. |
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