Saturday, March 30, 2024

Big Healthy Rivers changes mooted

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Widespread changes to the Healthy Rivers plan that will remove some of its more contentious elements have been recommended. The hearings panel formed to consider submissions and recommend changes to the Waikato Regional Council has released its findings.
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They want to scrap the requirement for all farmers to establish a nitrogen reference points (NRP).

Instead each catchment would have nitrogen leaching numbers. The NRP was based on the historical nitrogen leaching value estimated by Overseer for the 2015 or 2016 years, which was heavily criticised by some farmers as a form of grandparenting.

The proposed nitrogen leaching numbers for each farm trigger an activity status, ranging from being a permitted activity for small and low intensity farming to it being a discretionary activity for those farmers with a high leaching rate.

That would put high-emitting farmers under greater scrutiny as to whether they should be required to do proportionally more to reduce the level of their discharges through resource consents and farm environmental plans.

Those plans will be the main tool used to push for better environmental practices. 

Farmers will also be incentivised to lower their nitrogen leaching rate for their business to be categorised as a permitted activity without a resource consent.

Removing the NRPs would also remove the grandparenting aspect of the plan change.

The panel also recommended removing the existing priority catchment system, which creates a timeline for when farm plans and NRPs are to be submitted to the council.

It is to be replaced by a new system based on E coli levels in each catchment.

Waikato Regional councillors will consider and vote on the panel’s recommendations at a meeting on Wednesday. 

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