In the 2018-19 year council staff inspected 783 dairy effluent discharge consents either on-site or by air and found 634 fully compliant, 139 graded as low risk or moderately non-compliant and 10, or 1.8%, as significantly non-compliant.
The previous year 922 sites were inspected, some more than twice, and 17, or 1.9%, were found to be significantly non-compliant.
The council’s regulatory committee chairman Neville Cook said the improvement shows farmers are aware of their responsibilities and are doing something about it.
Significant non-compliance is when breaches of planning rules and national environmental standards lead to or can create significant environmental consequences.
Cook says the council’s approach to compliance is based on enabling, encouragement, education and enforcement including reminding urban residents about their responsibilities towards stormwater and wastewater discharges.
“Our view is that education and support is the best approach to achieve continuous improvement in environmental performance across all sectors but everyone needs to play their part.”
The number of high-priority incidents responded to by the council jumped from 462 to 660 last year, with most air-related complaints.
Meanwhile, a study looking at faecal pollution in Southland rivers has found the dominant source is wildfowl – geese, swans, gulls and ducks.
The study looked at the Aparima, Mataura, Oreti and Waiau rivers, known to have high levels of E coli, and found 80% of faecal pollution is from wildfowl.
However, the council’s science manager Dr Elaine Moriarty says the risk to human health from wildfowl E coli is low.
“The risk of becoming sick after swimming in a river that contains bird pollution is low while the risk of swimming in a river with even a small amount of pollution from human or ruminant sources is very high as the diseases this pollution carries are more readily transmitted to humans.”
The study, jointly funded by the council and ESR, found pollution from ruminants in 50% of samples but that increased after rain.
Faecal pollution from ruminants typically contains bacteria such as campylobacter, cryptosporidium and salmonella, which are of concern for human health.
Human faecal pollution was also detected at a limited number of sites.
National Party’s MP Hamish Walker says the results show while targeting farmers over water pollution, Fish and Game ignored the contribution of wildfowl.
“Fish and Game have been irresponsible in painting farmers as the polluters while neglecting and ignoring other contributing factors.
“They need to take some responsibility for the effect wildfowl are having on our waterways and focus on those effects, not continually firing shots at farmers.”
The findings from the study will be used to direct the work being done by land care and catchment groups and industry bodies across Southland to reduce the health risk from the contaminants.
