Thought this billboard that someone has put up was awesome. Apparently it has upset some of the local regional councillors who have overseen the pollution…

The Mohaka River has to be the jewel in the crown of Hawkes Bay trout fisheries, yet the upper reaches of this magnificent river are in decline due mainly to intense dairy farming and the subsequent effluent run-off.

One of its tributaries is the Taharua River, into which flows pollution from a large industrial dairy farm – a famous one in fact. Taharua Ltd’s owner Crafarms has been convicted multiple times, with the most recent just a fortnight ago.

To illustrate the effect of dairy pollution on waterways, a Hawke’s Bay Fish and Game officer has posted this video showing the change in water quality of the Mohaka River above and below where the Taharua flows into it.

As Baybuzz wrote yesterday:

The source? This small area [the Taharua catchment] is home to a third of the [HB] region’s total dairy herd, some 9,000 dairy cows. Saturate a free-draining pumice soil with that many cows and the situation is right for the increased nutrient levels observed in the upper reaches of the river. …

[Fish and Game officer] Maxwell notes that the Mohaka is the only river in Hawke’s Bay supposedly protected by a Water Protection Order, yet it appears to be deteriorating … in part because the Regional Council lacks the appropriate mechanisms in its Resource Management Plan to regulate the land use that is the suspected cause.

The solution? Upping pollution fines – one positive part of National’s first RMA Bill. Strengthening the RMA – the opposite to what the RMA Bill does. Strengthening and expanding Water Conservation Orders. And some political will to back up Ministers’ bark with some bite.

Taharua Farm has been fined $37,500 after Hawke’s Bay Regional Council laid charges for the discharge of dairy effluent that was well over the resource consent conditions.

This is the largest fine in New Zealand for a single dairy effluent charge.

The basis of the Taharua Farm consent was that 3000 cows were being milked. However as cows increased above that number, to around 4500 cows, the effluent volume increased accordingly. There was no request from the farm company to change the conditions of that consent.

During routine compliance checks in April and November by a Regional Council compliance office, the farm manager gave incorrect information on the number of cows on the property.

Taharua farm manager Frank (Sam) Webb and his wife were winners of the Central Plateau farm manager of the year title in April 2007.

The Environment Court Judge Thompson recognised that if this was not a deliberate action, it was grossly negligent. Judge Thompson acknowledged that the Taharua and Mohaka rivers are sensitive receiving environments. The rivers also have significant cultural, commercial and recreational values, and discharges over and above the nitrogen loadings lead to insidious and cumulative effects over time.

Breaking your consent limits by 50% is no laughing matter. It’s no accident either. Fonterra is pressing dairy farmers to expand dairy production by 4% per year, compounding. The only way to maintain this level of growth is to over stock, and thus break the law. So who should we shoot? The messenger or the message? In this case the messenger was shot, but I dare say the fine is peanuts compared to the economic gain in breaking the law. So the only loser thus far is the environment. The real problem is the growth-at-all-costs paradigm. Amazingly, we heard this from a government Minister:

Mr Mallard had said that they would be looking at the science around dairying and what is clear is that the rate of intensification, unchecked, will just not be able to continue. Mr Mallard said that in some areas, dairy expansion might not be able to continue.

Mallard’s statement is a glimmer of common sense in a sea of ignorance about the obvious limits to growth. Let’s hope it takes root. I have my doubts. We don’t need to stop dairying. We do need to stop it completely and stop it expanding where it leads to a fouling of our rivers and our drinking water.

Now as industrial dairy moves in and a drought hits the region the numbers of sheep on our southern Hawkes Bay farms have diminished.  And the inevitable result of that flows on through the local economy, which does not have the diversity it once had to survive the bad news from one industry. 

We need to be promoting more diverse economies, rather than each town putting all its hopes on one industry.  The current bubble is industrial dairy.  Do we have any economic plan for what happens when that particular bubble pops, after dairy has steamrolled over and irrigated under all other farms and forests?

[Update]

Let me send a big ‘ka pai’ to Kiwiblog, for exposing PPCS Chief Executive, Keith Cooper’s use of the term ‘right sizing’.

“Without realising it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself.  It is time to make peace with the planet”.

Gore says that those who needed to show the most simpatico and brotherhood to the planet were USA and China.  He feels Bali might be a good place to start things off.

And start things off the US certainly did when it suggested that there should be no targets for rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions in any text on climate change talks that comes out of Bali. It would prefer voluntary goals. 

Some of those US officials are probably happy enough to drag the debate out in tropical Bali, rather than go back home, where a ‘deadly ice storm is sweeping through the US Plains’ leaving 400,000 people without power in the middle of winter and killing twelve Americans.

And, talking of weather, Farmers in Hawkes Bay and other parts of New Zealand are starting to talk drought and hence selling stock early and underweight.  The National Climate Centre at NIWA said farmers could be facing a drought as devastating as in 1988/89.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, says she feels let down by the Ministry for the Environment over its handling of employment issues. Yes, these days the Ministry for the Environment deals predominantly with employment issues and mediating disputes.  Disputes between the big old parties that say their focus is ‘sustainability’.