Waitaki Mayor Alex Familton has rejected a suggestion from the Environmental Defence Society that land-use consents granted by the Waitaki District Council for intensive dairying in the Omarama and Ohau area are illegal.
The council granted land-use consents and compliance certificates to Five Rivers Ltd, Southdown Holdings Ltd and Williamson Holdings Ltd for 16 dairy farms, which would run up to 17,850 cows.
The consents and certificates were not publicly notified.
Society chairman Gary Taylor, of Auckland, suggested the consents were unlawful because their "more than minor" environmental effects on the landscape and ecology of the tussock lands meant they should have been publicly notified, and because the council wrongly concluded the proposed farm buildings were permitted activities under its plan.
Last month, council planning manager David Campbell said resource consents were required to be publicly notified - allowing people to make submissions - if the effects were considered more than minor.
For the dairy farm developments, the council considered the effects were noise, odour, dust, rural amenity and visual effects resulting from intensive farming.
It deemed those effects would be no more than minor as the sites were very isolated and there was considerable separation from any established residential dwellings.
When contacted yesterday, Mr Familton said the applicants must go through the whole process, including Environment Canterbury consents.
He believed the council had no option because in rural Waitaki other dairy developments and large dairy buildings had been granted consents.
"If anybody has said our processes are incorrect, I believe they haven't got a case," Mr Familton said.
Mr Taylor said the fact a "piecemeal approach" had been taken - first getting land-use consents, then seeking water consents and then discharge consents - meant no-one looked at the proposals in their entirety and the full implications would never be considered in a holistic manner.
He understood the Government would be considering whether to call-in the discharge consent applications at this week's Cabinet meeting.
The society supported the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's recommendation for a call-in.
Mr Taylor believed the Government should go a step further and file judicial review proceedings in the High Court to test the validity of the land-use consents.
Waitaki First chairwoman and former Waitaki district councillor Helen Brookes said she could not comment on the legal aspects of the situation, as she was not qualified to do that.
However, Waitaki First believed the land-use consent applications should have been publicly notified and would "certainly support" any move to have the applications revisited.
