From Monday 24 September, the Otago Regional Council (ORC) will start their annual dairy inspections.

Inspections are undertaken to ensure appropriate management of farm infrastructure and address any potential environmental risks such as proximity of waterways to irrigated areas, effluent management, and discharges of sediment or silage leachate to waterways.

Properties that meet one or more of the following criteria will be inspected first:

Those in a catchment with poor or declining water quality.
Those that have insufficient effluent storage.
Those that use travelling irrigators (or similar high-rate application systems) or have inadequate fail-safe systems.

Last year the ORC carried out 165 inspections with similar assessment criteria to this year. 13 inspections were non-compliant, predominately due to ponding (overapplication or application of effluent water to saturated soils) and discharge of silage leachate. Five infringements were issued in 2017.

The ORC is following a decontamination protocol for M Bovis. Vehicles contain a decontamination kit and staff are following a comprehensive procedure, which includes contacting the landowner before entering any property for a dairy inspection.

ENDS

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