Friday, March 29, 2024

Election muddies water issues

Neal Wallace
Freshwater management faces significant reform regardless of who wins September’s general election.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Labour and Green Parties would campaign on policies tightening the granting of resource consents for activities such as dairying.

Labour also promised to charge “a resource rental for large water take for irrigation at a fair and affordable price”.

Also in the wings, Environment Minister Nick Smith said a technical paper on options for allocating and pricing water was due in December and would have to be addressed by the incoming government.

The next government also needed to implement the next phase of the National Policy Statement on Freshwater, which would stipulate good management practices farmers were expected to meet to reduce their environmental footprint and which were being developed with the primary sector.

Smith said the first-in first-served basis for allocating water did not encourage the most efficient, maximum economic use but pricing was problematic because water was short in some areas and plentiful in others.

Britain and Australia had grappled with those issues and the Government wanted an assessment from a technical working group headed by Environment Canterbury commissioner David Caygill.

“It is our view that these issues are complex, which people who want to simplistically slap a cents a litre charge on fail to recognise,” Smith said.

The National Party would campaign on its water policies while water quality was the “doom and gloom” picture being painted by opposition parties though scientific analysis showed progress was being made.

In the last nine years nearly all water takes were metered, 20% of catchments had nitrate limits, 81% of water takes had limits, phosphorous and sediment levels in waterways were falling and E coli levels were stable.

But Smith acknowledged nitrate levels were increasing in more areas than they were improving.

Capping stock numbers reduced land management flexibility and amounted to the Government dictating what could be grown and where.

Similarly, parties were pointing the finger at dairy farmers over water quality, when the average E coli count in urban centres was 440 compared to 180 in pastoral areas and nutrient pollution from some horticultural areas exceeded dairying.

Labour environment spokesman David Parker took aim at regional councils over the state of waterways, with the party promising people would see improved water quality within five years.

“I blame regional councils. They have had full, delegated authority to control pollution in rivers since the Resource Management Act was introduced in 1992 and most of them have failed.”

A Labour government would introduce a new national policy statement so activities degrading water would no longer be a permitted activity, which would effectively reduce livestock intensity.

He wasn’t singling out dairying but questioning how intensive beef feedlots in Hawke’s Bay were given permission and how cities like Auckland could discharge raw sewage into the sea.

Parker wanted farmers to start pressuring those polluting the environment but was also disappointed at councils such as Horizons, where he said councillors wanting to address water issues were voted off and replaced by councillors more sympathetic to farming.

Green’s co-leader James Shaw declined in an interview to provide specific policy details ahead of a formal release closer to the election but said it would be a mix of economic incentives and regulation.

Shaw said the “Punch and Judy approach” to resolving water quality issues had failed.

“It is not just the fault of the dairy sector.

“Every time it rains in Auckland half the city’s sewage goes out to sea. Housing development creates sediment loss and there are heavy metals entering our drainage systems.”

NZ First policies would end the first-in first-served basis for allocating water in favour of an approach that prioritised national need.

Agricultural water use would have to be “sustainable” but water would not be taxed beyond the recovery of capital, operating costs and a “fair” rate of return.

Regional councils had tightened their environmental rules and increased thresholds that farmers must meet, which many believed would dramatically curb the rate of future expansion or intensification.

Environment Canterbury chief scientist Tim Davie said newly introduced environmental limits on nutrient leaching, controls on water use and stipulated “good management practices” had created higher thresholds farmers had to meet to intensify or expand but that did not mean a cap on cows.

“They are the limits, how you get there is your choice.

“You may want to halve your number of cows but it’s not the only end result.”

Environment Southland was consulting on its Water and Land 2020 and Beyond document that restricted future dairy conversions and controlled winter grazing.

The Taranaki Regional Council’s director of environment quality, Gary Bedford, said water quality surveys dating to 1994 showed improved ecological health in 87% of the 53 sites where changes could be determined.

He attributed it to riparian plans covering 14,500km of streams, of which 85% were fenced and most planted.

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