Federated Farmers says changes to drinking water rules announced today are a major win for farmers, rural communities, and common sense.

Those supplying fewer than 25 people with drinking water will no longer be required to comply with onerous new rules or register the details of their water supply arrangements with Government.

"Farming families across the country will be breathing a sigh of relief," says Federated Farmers local government spokesperson Sandra Faulkner.

"The drinking water rules introduced by the previous Government were a massive regulatory overreach that would have made life incredibly difficult for 80,000 rural and remote households.

"The process of registering, testing, and reporting on their water supply would have added significant cost, risk and hassle for absolutely no gain."

Federated Farmers say these rules would have also applied to milking sheds, wool sheds, or anywhere else where drinking water is supplied on a farm.

"When the regulator arrives, the goodwill leaves," Faulkner says.

"It never made any sense to try and capture thousands of very small shared domestic supplies of fewer than 25 people under these regulations.

"People would have been forced to turn the tap off, quite literally, on their staff, neighbours and communities to avoid unnecessary cost and the risk attached to penalties within these rules."

Faulkner says that rural families have been supplying safe drinking water for generations and that protections are already in place through processor quality assurance programmes.

"There is no practical or realistic way these obligations could have been enforced," Faulkner says.

"It would have just created a situation where very small suppliers were reluctant to make use of services such as information and guidance provided by Taumata Arowai."

Faulkner says these changes show the power of grassroots advocacy.

"Federated Farmers have been calling for these changes for a number of years and have worked collaboratively with local iwi and primary processors to achieve this result," Faulkner says.

"Today that detailed, comprehensive, and persistent work has paid off."

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