Effluent breaches on the rise

• Published date: 18 April 2024
• Author: Mike Dinsdale
• Publication title: Northern Advocate, The (Whangarei, New Zealand)

However, the long-term trend is for a decline in the numbers breaching consent conditions, according to Northland Regional Council (NRC)

The council’s farm dairy effluent monitors visited 714 farms from July 31 last year to check on discharge. Most — 547 — were consented farms while 176 were non-consented farms.

Of the consented farms the council found that 65 per cent (353) were fully compliant with their effluent discharge consents — down from 70 per cent in the previous 12 months — with 29 per cent having moderate non-compliance issues, up from 2022’s 24 per cent.

The annual monitoring also found that 6 per cent of the farms visited — 33 — had significant non-compliance issues, the same as the previous monitoring results.

Of the non-consented farms, 80 per cent were fully compliant (up from 72 per cent the previous year), 12 per cent had moderate non-compliance (down from 17 per cent), while 8 per cent (14) had significant non-compliance issues, down from 11 per cent previously. The overall significant non-compliance rate for all the farms was 7 per cent

The council issued three abatement notices and nine infringement notices for dairy farm effluent discharges in 2023.

NRC compliance monitoring manager Tess Dacre said too much shouldn’t be made of a slight differences between years. Overall the rate of significant non-compliance on dairy farms has been improving for the last decade.

Dacre said the council has one current prosecution for farm dairy effluent for alleged offences which occurred in 2021, but no prosecutions have been instigated for the 2022/23 or 2023/24 years.

“We are seeing less adverse effects on the environment from point source farm dairy effluent...