15 August 2011

Hawke’s Bay Dairy Audit at 100% Again

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s inspection of dairy effluent compliance has achieved 100% in a national audit for the third year in a row.

The results were reported this week to Council’s Environmental Management Committee.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is the one of only two councils in New Zealand that achieved 100% consistency with the criteria this year (along with Tasman District Council) and the only Council to get 100% for each of the three years the audits have been done.

“It’s a great result for Hawke’s Bay dairy farmers who can be confident that they are being measured consistently with others across the country and that they are getting a highly reliable compliance assessment service from regional council officers,” said Cr Eileen von Dadelszen, Chairman of Council’s Environmental Management Committee.

The audit of the council’s compliance assessment was done in July 2011 with randomly selected dairy discharge compliance files taken to Wellington for peer review.

The audit process has been in place since 2008 when regional councils across the country developed a set of nationally consistent criteria and categories for dairy effluent compliance reporting.

Before this councils were using inconsistent categories, with the result that the same farm effluent issue was being graded differently across the country. This made it difficult for the dairy industry to compare performance. Fonterra and Federated Farmers also needed consistent reporting so they could assess the true level of compliance being achieved by farmers.

ENDS

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