High-country farmers believe many of the measures in the Otago Regional Council's proposed plan change 6A designed to maintain and improve water quality will be unworkable in their farming environments.
Many submissions to the council's hearing panel in Wanaka yesterday questioned how to manage extensive farming activities without breaching proposed new regulations.
Practical difficulties included getting stock across streams and rivers in large farming blocks, and the economics and logic of fencing rivers in flood plains.
The lawyer acting for the Cardrona Land Care Group, Jan Caunter, said the group was not opposed to the philosophy of the plan but believed the catchment should be treated differently because of its cold winter climate, its geography and its history.
Cardrona Valley farmer Ben Gordon said bridges would be guaranteed to wash out and were impractical.
The panel members accepted the quality of water in the Cardrona Valley and elsewhere in the Upper Clutha was good.
Sam Kane, from Glenfoyle Station, believed measures designed for monitoring leachate in intensive, low-country dairying were unworkable in the high country with its variable soil types and conditions.
Randall Aspinall, of Mt Aspiring Station, provided results of water testing on his property that showed it was breaching its nitrogen runoff limit - of 10kg per hectare per year - by 5kg. That was despite nitrogen fertiliser not having been used on the station for 25 years, and a relatively low stocking rate.
Panel member Clive Geddes said the plan involved a consent process in which exceptions could be made.
Day 8
Where: Wanaka.
Panel: Crs Duncan Butcher (chairman) and David Shepherd and independent member Clive Geddes.
Proposal: Changes to Otago's water regulations to prevent run-off in rural areas polluting the region's waterways.
Submitters: Cardrona Land Care lawyer Jan Caunter; Cardrona Valley farmers Hamish Mackay, Ben Gordon, Tim Scurr, John Lee; Isabella Anderson, Branch Creek Station; Wanaka resident Dr Dennis Pezaro; Kate and Iris Scott, Rees Valley Station; Taff Cochrane, Hunter Valley Station; Tom Pinckney, Northburn Ltd, Richard Burdon, Glen Dene Station; Alan Cone, Canterbury; Sam Kane, Glenfoyle Station; Randall Aspinall, Mt Aspiring Station.
Quote of day: Duncan Butcher: "It's not a traffic notice slapped on the windscreen of the tractor ... We aren't going to have thousands of inspectors running around the country."
