Monitoring season about to begin

Monday 10 September 2007

The Bay of Plenty’s dairy farmers are being reminded to make sure they’re meeting conditions of resource consents as the monitoring season nears.

Environment Bay of Plenty Principal Compliance Officer Steve Pickles says the Regional Council is about to begin its annual dairy shed monitoring programme.

“It’s the perfect time to re-familiarise yourself with your consent if you haven’t looked at it in a while. Make sure what you’re doing and what you should be doing are the same.”

Mr Pickles says a recent prosecution highlighted the importance of farmers keeping up with maintenance and good practice, and ensuring they’re meeting their consent conditions at all times.

“It was an expensive lesson for the Opotiki farm owner and farm worker. What was a three hour job involving a digger and a high pressure hose turned into a $12,000 fine. They had been warned previously to make sure all their effluent went to the pond system, but failed to take the advice. The resulting discharge of effluent to a watercourse, for a period of up to 4 months, was extremely disappointing.

“If for some reason you’re not meeting your consent conditions, make sure you do something about it so that you are.”

He says if people need advice about the best way to meet their consent conditions they should give one of the compliance team a call.

“We’d be more than happy to point you in the right direction.”

Mr Pickles says overall compliance in the Bay of Plenty is high, however there’s always room to improve on the 10% of people who aren’t complying.

“We’re checking more than 400 sites in the Bay of Plenty. It’s part of our planned annual monitoring, but consent holders shouldn’t forget that we can visit and check sites at any time of the year.

“So if there’s some maintenance to be done, do it straight away. It could save you a lot of time and money in the future.”

ENDS

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