Water quality role for all

Is there a double standard at work over water quality in rural and urban settings? Mike Lord suggests there is.

I read Simon McMillan's well-written piece ("City should look after Stream", ODT, 2.3.10) with interest.

On the same day, two pages later, there was news of dairy farms in North Otago being fined for unintentional "discharge to land in circumstances that might result in the discharge entering the waterways".

"Unintentional ...", "Might result in ..." Pretty stringent criteria for the dairy industry to meet, but then, waterways are worth protecting and we need these stringent criteria to make sure water quality doesn't get any worse.

Don't we?

I have been following the news around the DCC's unintentional discharge of sewage to the Kaikorai Stream pretty closely and expect to see the same logic applied to the city's discharge into the stream.

However, I am still waiting for the same stringent headlines to appear in the paper that are applied to my fellow dairy farmers.

That two issues which are similar in nature can expect different treatment highlights for me the double standard under which water pollution is currently judged.

The dairy farm discharges were not deliberate, nor was the DCC's pollution of the Kaikorai stream.

The dairy farmers will be fined thousands of dollars and in one case the owner has invested $100,000 into improving the farm's effluent pond.

What will the DCC get?

I'm not particularly keen that the DCC spend even more of the ratepayers' money than they're already doing.

I'll be paying around $900 in rates for the new stadium alone this year and don't need my rates bill to be any bigger than it already is.

But if clean waterways are important, then the same approach to enforcing the rules needs to be applied to everyone.

I make this comparison not because I don't think the dairy sector can do better.

We can do better and we have every incentive to do so with the amount of scrutiny we're under.

There is a huge investment going into improving what we do on-farm to ensure we meet public and market expectations.

Dairy NZ has just completed a draft code of practice and design standards for farm dairy effluent systems, farmers across the country are investing literally millions of dollars in riparian fencing, planting, new storage ponds and new low-rate effluent irrigation systems, herd homes and stand-off pads to reduce soil compaction and get cows off wet soils to reduce nutrient loss.

Many farmers have adopted new technology that means that they receive a text message if there is a problem with the effluent irrigator, and they are installing automatic shut-off and alarm systems to alert them to any problems.

In another ODT article ("Dunedin waterways 'basically crap"', 14.6.08), regional councillors made it clear they had a grasp on the fact that waterway pollution is not solely the domain of the dairy industry.

In the article, ORC water quality scientist Rachel Ozanne was quoted as saying bacteria levels in the urban streams were elevated and likely to be directly attributable to stormwater discharges or cross connections with foul sewer systems.

Part of solving a problem is to admit that there is a problem in the first place, and if you read the paper you might get the feeling that dairy farmers are to blame for all water quality problems.

This is demonstrably not true.

We need to do more, we are and we will do more.

My farm continues to be a shop window to the public and is scrutinised as such.

I expect the same level of investment that I am making and the same level of scrutiny to be applied to everyone.

Mike Lord is provincial president of Otago Federated Farmers.