Jeremy McPhail made his comment in a nitrate workshop held three months after a report was written for the council about the rising health risk that last year caused Gore’s water supply to be temporarily turned off.
Council staff addressing the meeting said widespread nitrate contamination was caused most significantly by animal urine, cropping and the application of synthetic fertiliser. It was considered to be severe in multiple locations, and ‘‘multiple hot-spot areas’’ exhibited concentrations high enough to exceed the drinking-water limit.
At a number of long-term monitoring sites, the situation was degrading and 44% of private drinking supply wells were in areas vulnerable to contamination.
In the meeting, councillors were asked what they wanted to happen next.
Cr Lyndal Ludlow said there might be a need for a multi-layered spatial map to identify ‘‘pressures and vulnerable spots ... in a really accessible way so we can plan ahead’’.
Cr Roger Hodson agreed it would be ‘‘good to understood the spatial resolution and temporal frequency of land use assessments ... and the control, and ability to control, we have’’.
He also addressed the issue of conflicts of interest in nitrate decision-making by council.
‘‘It would be good to understand, if we could also review conflicts of interest related to decisions around nitrate management, given the gravity.’’
Later in the meeting, Cr McPhail said: ‘‘The elephant in the room is the intensification ... we do have issues with intensification.’’
He called for the ‘‘enabling’’ of on-farm measures that did not require permission.
‘‘There are things we can encourage.’’
‘‘That is not to take away from other things. This isn’t going to go away. It is one of multiple things we need to sort out to make sure we have resilience for our communities.’’
Cr Phil Morrison said one ‘‘potential pathway’’ was to work with partners to develop ‘‘hot-spot action plans’’ in areas with high nitrate pollution.
The plans would aim to ‘‘understand and engage with land users and managers in those regions and focus efforts on ... the likely source and accelerate, in a local fashion, good practices ... getting buy-in, if you like, from the people affected in those hot-spot locations and the people potentially contributing to the issue’’.
He said the approach would also enable understanding of cost.
Following the workshop, freshwater experts and campaigners stressed the urgency of stopping further intensification, while also deintensifying and preventing conflicts of interest.
University of Otago freshwater policy expert Marnie Prickett said there was a need to halt ongoing intensification in Southland, giving examples of intensive stocking of livestock and winter grazing and using more irrigation or expanding areas under irrigation.
‘‘There needs to be urgency about stopping things from getting worse ... These things will only increase pollution.’’
She urged Environment Southland to look for gaps in its own plans and then call on the government to set policy to protect drinking water within the resource management reforms.
‘‘People need to have confidence that the decisions their elected regional councillors are making are not compromised.’’
