“Basically it said, whatever you’re doing on your land or through that consent was going to have an impact on water quality, which essentially is all farming everywhere,” he told The Country’s Jamie Mackay.
“Then councils just couldn’t grant a consent, which is just ludicrous.”
Henderson said the effect would have been stifling for farmers.
“It really would have put a halt to farming up and down the country.
“It would have put a halt to wastewater discharges from cities, from towns, maybe even for septic consents [for] houses.”
However, he said in a statement that the updates didn’t give farmers “a free pass” as they still needed to meet national and regional regulations.
“These amendments simply provide clarity that the regulatory pathways regional councils have spent years and millions of dollars developing will prevail.”
The amendments affected not only dairy farming but horticultural production and wastewater and stormwater.
This was why DairyNZ worked with multiple industry organisations to find a solution, including B+LNZ, Federated Farmers, Horticulture NZ and Irrigation NZ, Henderson said.
The issue was sparked by the implementation of national freshwater regulations, which were impractical due to a lack of consideration of regional variations, unrealistic national bottom lines, and a focus on numerical limits rather than environmental outcomes, he said.
Listen to Jamie Mackay interview Cameron Henderson on The Country below:
Henderson was pleased with the Government’s speedy response to the joint campaign.
“The Government recognised that and moved quickly,” he told Mackay.
“So really I think we’ve dodged a bullet there, it could have been quite disastrous.”
Also in today’s interview: Henderson talked about dry conditions in the Canterbury region, interest rates coming down, and Otago Regional Council’s water rules.
