Free Talk Brings Minor Accord On Taranaki Water Pollution

Monday, 5 May 2025, 5:48 pm
Article: Craig Ashworth - Local Democracy Reporting

Relaxing the rules to allow free-flowing discussion has brought rare agreement on Taranaki Regional Council’s biggest headache – dairy farm effluent polluting streams and rivers.

Pouring treated cow pooh into freshwater is already outlawed in other key dairying regions – Waikato, Manawatu, Southland and Otago. Canterbury allows it but has zero active consents.

In Taranaki 277 farms still have consent to discharge effluent to waterways.

That’s a fifth of Taranaki’s dairy farms, and they’re scattered across the entire region.

The local herd stands at 450,000 suggesting effluent from some 90,000 cows can flow into streams and rivers after milking – although half those farms also have permission to discharge to land.

The council’s powerful Policy and Planning Committee is deciding how quickly farmers must stop polluting freshwater when their resource consents expire.

Farmer-lobby committee members mostly want a grace period for those facing looming expiry of consents, or where geographical or financial challenges make land discharge difficult.

Māori members want an immediately halt to tūtae flowing into awa and downstream to the moana, once consents expire.

The committee suspended standing orders at its meeting last week so people could speak more than once.

Rather than trying to win each debate with their sole speech, committee members instead had a more free-flowing discussion that led to unanimous consensus.

All agreed to pause the pollution decision so staff could bring more facts on problem farms to the next meeting in six weeks.

They hope the extra information will help the committee’s regional councillors, district councillor appointees, waka representatives, and Federated Farmers local president to agree on final deadlines.

New committee chair Bonita Bigham said free and frank discussion saw strongly-held views clearly articulated.

“To put those views on the table while also considering the perspectives of others, and not having to retrench back to a firm position to vote, I think is a really healthy way forward.”

Kurahaupō waka representative Tuhi-Ao Bailey pointed out farmers use public waterways for private business benefit.

She said Te Mana o te Wai priorities require that commercial needs come third – after the needs of the environment and of communities.

“Mana whenua are sick and tired of waiting for this to end. We've been debating this for years, decades.”

For Aotea waka, Peter Moeahu said the focus was environmental improvement, not the business interests of a minority of farmers who’d chosen to take as long as possible to change.

“The more we delay, the more we defer, the more we take our eye off the environmental ball – then we are not doing justice to our communities as a whole.”

Tokomaru’s Mitchell Ritai completed the unanimous Māori stand against extending consents, congratulating the 80 percent of famers whose work set a benchmark for laggards.

Farmer-lobby councillors differed on how long and lenient any consent extensions ought to be.

Councillor Donna Cram wanted to wait for Massey University research findings on whether slightly steeper slopes can cope with cowshed waste, potentially meaning more land is available for discharge.

For example, high on the ring plain around Taranaki Maunga massive rainfall soaks the ground then drains into multiple fast-running streams, leaving paddocks often unable to absorb waste.

“We should give farmers a chance to get this research because it could save them considerable money,” she said.

“We’re talking five or six hundred thousand dollars for some of these systems – it’s not chicken feed.”

Poultry shed and piggery systems also discharge to Taranaki waterways, but they’re a tiny minority compared to the hundreds of dairy farms.

Veteran councillor Donald McIntyre was fed up with fellow farmers dragging their heels and said consents shouldn’t be extended.

“They should just phase-out now as they come to the end of their [consents],” he said.

“They have had plenty of warning.”

Staff warned that a strict pollution deadline would expose a council unable to handle the surge of consent applications.

The rush might also inflate the market for building costly discharge-to-land systems, they advised.

Bigham is also TRC’s first elected Māori constituency councillor.

She chaired what she afterwards described as a more natural debate, with similar benefits to the fluidity of wānanga discussion.

“The statements of position, the discussion around why, the opportunity for added information; the opportunity for reassessment of those positions – or clarification of how further work may enable us to make better decisions.”

“That all came up, that was all free-flowing, all open.”

“It left me really heartened that people were able to see the benefits of having a discussion like that and move forward collectively, even if at the end of the day they may still hold the same positions.”

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