Friday, March 29, 2024

Big Waikato plan gets notified

Avatar photo
In what promises to be a lengthy process, the Waikato Healthy Rivers plan has made its first step into the light for public discussion.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

It was notified by the Waikato Regional Council (WRC) on October 22.

The plan was the first step in an 80-year goal to return Waikato rivers and waterways, including the full lengths of the Waikato and Waipa rivers, to swimmable and fishable status.

Developed over the past 2.5 years through input from a collaborative stakeholders group, the plan represented the first of its type to be constructed from a “ground up” stake holder input, aiming to deliver a collaborative solution that reduced the risk of Environment Court proceedings as it moved through the adoption process.

WRC’s newly appointed chairman Alan Livingston said issues had been raised with him by produce growers over the restraints the plan put on their businesses and that was the sort of issue better recognised earlier in the process than later.

“Notifying the plan has raised interest and awareness in it and that can only be a positive.”

Work by Federated Farmers on determining the costs for a drystock farm to meet the plan’s intended standards was a constructive exercise. The results, due in early November, would generate a lot of interest for those farmers.

He expected submissions from most sectors concerned about the plan’s impact on their land use but said it was up to the independent commissioners appointed to hear the submissions to consider them in the collective light of the plan’s overall goal.

 While the timeframe on the plan was working towards an 80-year goal, most of the rule changes took effect from July 2020. At that point farms in the region’s top 25% of nitrogen losses would be required to cut back to within the 75th percentile.

Farms were also required to submit their nitrogen reference point information by March 2019. That was the farm’s nitrogen loss based on Overseer calculation and determined for 2014-15 or 2015-16.

That point would determine where that farm sat within the catchment’s spread of nitrogen losses.

The exception was Rule 7, known as the land-change rule, which came into effect with the plan’s notification.

Rule 7 meant land use change from all non-dairy land uses into dairying was now classed as a non-complying activity and required resource consent to proceed.

Given dairying’s higher nitrogen losses than most land uses, WRC staff had conceded the rule change would make conversions in the catchment close to impossible or require costly nitrogen mitigation methods.

But the rapid move was defended on grounds of the rate of past conversions where 60,000ha of land had shifted from trees to dairying in the past nine years and a gradual introduction of the rule would mean more area could be converted during any phase-in process.

WRC chief executive Vaughn Payne said the collaborative had been concerned about land use conversion in the Waipa and Waikato catchments. Without the rule change the increase in contaminants from continuing conversions would only undo other reductions the plan sought to achieve.

Last year Landcorp voluntarily cut back its dairy conversion plans for 14,500ha of land in Taupo District, slicing more than 1000t a year of nitrogen potentially deposited in the Waikato River catchment.

The plan’s notification kicked of a lengthy submissions process extending over 80 working days and making allowance for a Christmas-New Year break, closing on March 8.

Payne said he hoped the submissions process would create workable solutions for all parties that could be implemented, delivering improvements in water quality.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading