Fishing News index> October 2007

HORIZONS REGIONAL COUNCIL PROPOSED ONE PLAN

The Wellington Fish and Game Council, is very supportive of the direction the One Plan is heading. The approach of the Plan to focus on four big issues within the region is considered astute and accurately reflects the wider community’s aspirations. Water quality, in particular, is known to be very poor in some rivers and worsening.
“Change to farming practices to limit damaging sediment and nutrients entering waterways and more restrictive standards applied to sewage discharges, was inevitable” says Peter Taylor, Senior Fish and Game Officer. He says that in all the pre Plan consultation he has attended (and it’s been considerable) as well as lively discussions with a wide variety of people, no one has challenged the need for significant improvement to our water quality or the need to leave sufficient water in our rivers and streams to protect their life supporting capacity.

“The reaction to the One Plan has mostly centered on the cost of achieving what the Plan proposes and several factors are being ignored in this debate. Firstly, most of the costs dairy farmers will face are required anyway under the Clean Streams Accord. Secondly, every rate payer will pay $15 to the Sustainable Land Use Initiative (SLUI) which, when one looks at the respective contributions, about 75% of the $1.5 million comes from urban ratepayers. Thirdly, there are significant cost benefits to farms by using best management practices – it is good business sense to not waste money by having good soil and fertilisers wash or leach into waterways.”

Recently Genesis Power Ltd applied for consents to operate the Tongariro Power Scheme and in negotiating those consents committed to mitigating the adverse effects of the Scheme to in excess of five hundred thousand dollars per annum. There was no suggestion that the community contribute to this cost. Therefore, he says, farmers should not expect the community to pay for mitigating their adverse effect on water quality. “The Federated Farmers should perhaps consider this: if the community did pay for the improvement in water quality, then I would suggest the community would have the right to demand more stringent standards achieved much more quickly than is being proposed. By paying, the farmers at least retain some say in the methods used and the time frames for implementation. They can’t have it both ways.”

“Farmer reaction on the issue of costs is understandable as there has never been a built in environmental cost (for example fencing and bridging of streams) to either their annual operation or the price of land. This Plan is a wake up call – it is for the first time specifying in-stream environmental standards that intensive farms are expected to meet and the Plan time frames for achieving these are, we believe, surprisingly lenient.” There is pressure too he says, on hill country farmers who are being given good time to improve farming practices on a voluntary basis. “They need to get on board now because if there isn’t improvement over the next 10 years they too would face a level of regulation.”

Territorial Authorities have no basis on which to gripe about the costs of achieving proper sewage treatment Mr Taylor says. “The serious effects of their discharges have been known for decades and generally, they have been very slow to keep up with the times. Most of them have regularly been non-compliant with consent conditions and 10 years ago the Manawatu Catchment Water Quality Plan sent a very strong message and if councils, both inside and outside of that catchment, did not heed that message they only have themselves to blame.” He says he can recall when Palmerston North City and Wanganui City agonised over the costs of proper sewage treatment and when they finally sought the community’s opinion, they found there was substantial majority support to clean up their respective rivers and willingness to meet the costs that would achieve that.

For further information contact Peter Taylor, Senior Fish and Game Officer, Wellington Fish and Game Council, 06 359 0409

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