Patience lost with oyster farmers

Northland Regional Council announced this week that it had been left with little choice but to "reluctantly" issue abatement notices to more than 40 Northland marine farmers for failing to lodge bonds designed to spare ratepayers the cost of cleaning up abandoned oyster farms.

For several years the council had been attempting to reach a mutually acceptable solution with oyster farmers to protect roughly 300 hectares of public space occupied by the almost 100 oyster farms involved, consents/monitoring senior programme manager Colin Dall said.

The 43 farmers involved had been operating from Parengarenga Harbour to the Kaipara Harbour in the south.

Mr Dall said that under the terms of their resource consents, which had been comprehensively reviewed in 2009 and 2010, the farmers were required to lodge a bond of $9000 for each hectare of developed farm. However, by obtaining a bank-guaranteed bond, the average operator with about four hectares of farm structures, would need to pay as little $360 annually.

The bonds were designed to help cover the extensive costs of attempting to clean up farms if they were abandoned by their owners or left in a derelict state, but farmers have repeatedly cited tough financial times as a key factor in the on-going delays in lodging them.

Mr Dall said the regional council, which had tried to be as accommodating as possible in a bid to reach a mutually acceptable outcome, had extended the deadline for bond lodgement three times over several years.

"The last two extensions were given to allow the New Zealand Oyster Industry Association time to develop a dedicated industry clean-up fund as its proposed alternative to a bond for each consent," he said.

In April this year councillors had agreed to a "final" deadline of June 30 for an acceptable industry-arranged alternative to be implemented, but that deadline had now passed with no resolution in sight.

The council was now poised to issue abatement notices this week, giving oyster farmers another three months to lodge the required bonds (or an acceptable alternative) or face further enforcement action, including daily fines of up to $750.

Mr Dall said that while councillors had some sympathy for the oyster farmers' position, and were reluctant to take formal enforcement action, they had a wider duty to all Northlanders to ensure commercial operators using public space in coastal areas left it in an environmentally acceptable state.

"Northland has already had issues with a number of oyster farms which have required expensive clean-ups, including about 20 in the Waikare Inlet alone," he said.

"Farms like these which fall into disrepair and/or are abandoned can have a number of adverse environmental effects, and also pose a navigation hazard."

He did not see it as unreasonable for the region's ratepayers to expect that those who were gaining commercial benefit from what was effectively exclusive use of public space should pay to clean it up if things went wrong. Given that Northland oyster farms included only several hectares of actual structures that would require a bond, which could be as little as $90 per hectare per annum, the costs were not prohibitive, he added.