A statement from Environment Canterbury confirmed the applicant has met all but one of the 99 conditions required to activate the consents.
The outstanding issue was considered minor and no reason to delay consent.
The Lake Pukaki property has become a flash point for environmentalists angry at plans by Simons Pass owner Murray Valentine to convert part of the 9700ha property to dairying.
He already milks 840 cows on the farm but this and other pending consents allow him to extend the irrigated area to 4500ha of which 1500ha is a dairy unit and the balance dairy-beef finishing and a halfbred sheep breeding unit.
Mackenzie Basin Alignment Programme chairwoman Nadeine Dommisse said intensive farming land use would not get consent there today because the rules have changed. The programme is a group of five government agencies charged with regulating land use and water quality in the Mackenzie Country.
“The rules in the Mackenzie Basin are now are much stricter, particularly since 2015, and are beginning to bite.
“In fact, two new consent applications for more intensive farming have been declined since 2016 due to concerns over landscape values and water quality,” Dommisse says.
Consent was originally granted to Simons Pass in 2007 but appealed.
After mediation the Environment Court granted consent in 2016 with the imposition of 99 conditions, described by Dommisse as “probably the most onerous sets of conditions for a farm of this type anywhere in New Zealand”.
Those conditions include spending at least $100,000 a year restoring indigenous species on a 2500ha dryland recovery area to be left untouched and building a 30km long rabbit-proof boundary fence.
The applicant has installed an 8km pipeline to source water from the Tekapo hydro electric canal, allowing the retirement of water take consents from the Maryburn River.
Valentine said meeting the conditions was a challenge he was pleased had been achieved at the same time as he was constructing farm infrastructure.
Dommisse said Simons Pass had failed to meet one condition which related to a baseline survey of the Dryland Recovery Area but she was confident mitigating actions would ensure no irrigation water would reach the area.
“We’re satisfied they’ve done enough for now but we will be focusing on them completing the baseline survey by the end of the summer.”
She acknowledged the station is using precision agriculture and high levels of measuring and monitoring.
Greenpeace said it is furious at a council decision to let the farm turn on it’s irrigators before all the conditions of the resource consent are met.
Campaigner Gen Toop says she’s absolutely livid that ECan is allowing the country’s largest mega-dairy farm conversion to completely break the rules.
“What’s the point in having rules in place to protect wildlife and rivers when big dairy is allowed to just break them like this.”
“ECan’s job is to protect the environment but they are doing the exact opposite. They are bending the rules so that dairy corporates can make money at the cost of fragile landscapes, endangered wildlife and our rivers.
“This latest decision sets a really dangerous precedent.”
Greenpeace wants a nationwide ban on all new dairy farms.
