However, the standards were also met with solid fire from ecologists who maintained the goalposts had been moved for the standards’ to achieve the Government’s goals.
The water quality standards set a Government-declared goal of making 90% of rivers and lakes swimmable by 2040.
They required stock to be fenced out of waterways and regional councils were required to boost rules on sewerage discharges and riparian margin plantings.
The stock exclusion standards were taking a staggered approach through to 2030, based on animal type and land gradient. On rolling to steeper country up to 15 degrees slope they would apply only to waterways over 1m wide at any point.
Dairy support and deer units would have to be fenced by 2022. Beef cattle that were break fed on flat to rolling country were to be excluded from water ways by 2022 and free-range cattle by 2030.
With dairying already 97% down the path to fencing waterways the new standards had drystock farmers firmly in their sights.
DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said the sector was only a matter of months away from achieving 100% of all waterways running through dairy farms being fenced and stock crossings bridged.
General consensus in the drystock sector was the standards were generally pragmatic and achievable.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) chief executive Sam McIvor said the new standards held few surprises for the drystock sector.
“The question comes with the exclusion control delegated to regional councils, how they do that, and finding realistic pathways to achieve it in hill country.”
He welcomed the aspirational target the government had set, and said it was the first time farmers had been given a clear target on what it was the government wanted to achieve.
B+LNZ environmental policy manager Corina Jordan said in general the policy represented a more moderate pathway to improve environmental quality than Waikato drystock farmers faced under the proposed Healthy Rivers plan.
“Stock only have to be excluded from waterways on country up to 15 degrees of slope and on streams that are over a metre wide. This appears much more achievable than what is being required in Waikato and is not an unreasonable approach.”
Federated Farmers meat and fibre executive member Chris Irons in King Country said at first glance the standards appeared “quite workable” and more realistic than the Healthy Rivers proposal.
However, the new standards had ecologists and environmentalists calling out the Government for shortening up water quality standards to make the definition of “swimmable” more achievable.
Greatest concern came around the proposed allowable E. coli levels, which had effectively been doubled from the previous 260/100ml of water to 540/100ml.
The shift in levels means under the new standards a river or lake is classed as “A” for swimming when under the previous standards it would have been a “C”, with a greater than 5% chance of infection if swimming.
Massey University freshwater ecologist Dr Mike Joy described the new standards as a “fiddle” with the E. coli reset only one variable that raised the question about what constituted genuinely clear water.
“They have also used a dissolved oxygen level which is stupid. It tells you nothing about a river’s health because it fluctuates so much it is a pointless measure.
“If you went to the Manawatu River and measured it in the middle of the day it would read as “good” when this is one of the most polluted rivers in the world.”
Nitrate levels had been set at almost 10 times the levels defined as a maximum by the Australia-NZ guidelines for fresh and marine water quality.
“Under these standards the Manawatu River would rate as an “A” or a “B” and that is not the case.”
While the Government had opted to include measuring invertebrate health as part of assessing waterway health, Joy said no measures or indicators of what was acceptable had been provided in the standards.
Ecologist, veterinarian and consultant Dr Alison Dewes said the standards would make rivers dirtier and swimming riskier while encumbering councils with more responsibility for dealing with them.
“And they have kept a horrible nitrate bottom line.”
She said the arrow had been aimed “too hard” at the drystock sector with waterway fencing.
“A lot of the E. coli is coming from activity on sensitive soils where we have intensified over the last 20 years with a high risk for pathogen loss on these leaky soils and fencing hill country will not change that.”
