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Progress made in cleaning up waterways

Thursday 17 March 2011

Farmers are making some headway in cleaning up the nation’s waterways says Local Government New Zealand.

Figures from the just released Dairying and Clean Streams Accord: Snapshot of Progress 2009/2010 show an overall improvement in compliance with regional council dairy effluent rules and consent conditions.

LGNZ regional council sector spokesperson Fran Wilde says the onus of responsibility for ensuring New Zealand’s waterways are not polluted will continue to be with dairy farmers.

“Whilst it is gratifying to see that the national level of full compliance has increased to 65 per cent from 60 per cent the previous year, this is tempered with the fact that significant non-compliance continues to rise on a national basis – from 12 per cent in 2007/08 to 16 per cent in 2009/10,” Fran Wilde said.

“Regional councils are working hard around consistency of reporting, to ensure compliance and to support farmers to make decisions which reflect their responsibility to keep our waterways free of polluting dairy effluent.

“Although overall the compliance result is pleasing, a small section of the farming community continues to fail to comply and the real challenge for councils and the dairy industry is to ensure that those remaining non-complying farmers lift their performance.

“However, it’s pleasing to see progress has been made in significant areas of the accord and that farmers are getting the message. LGNZ applauds the work Fonterra is doing to encourage their farmers to comply.”

Progress has also been made towards meeting targets for excluding stock from waterways.

Dairy cattle are now excluded from waterways on 85 per cent of farms with all regions having achieved the 2007 target and four regions having achieved the 2012 target of 90 per cent of waterways protected.

LGNZ is a signatory to the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord on behalf of regional councils.

ENDS

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