Farmers applaud sensible decision

Bay of Plenty Federated Farmers meat and fibre chairman Rick Powdrell.

Federated Farmers has succeeded in its stand against draft hazardous substances rules in the Whangarei district plan.

Northland provincial president John Blackwell described the Whangarei District Council's decision as sensible.

Farmers would have found themselves needing resource consent from the council for hazardous substances that were allowed by existing government legislation if the draft had been adopted, he said. The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act (HSNO) already provided comprehensive rules for managing hazardous substances, while the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 required users and handlers to be trained and certified.

"The draft council rules would have been duplicating these existing controls for no extra benefit, and there was also a risk that council rules would be inconsistent," Mr Blackwell said.

The draft rules had also been complicated, and would have left farmers in a quandary over what they actually had to do to be compliant.

"If you have ever tried to follow the draft rule table with permitted quantities by class, it's very difficult to use, both for farmers and council staff," he added.

Hazardous substance products often fell into several classes, and multiple quantities could apply to a single product. For example, diesel had multiple classifications as a flammable liquid, a skin irritant, a carcinogen and an aquatic ecotoxin.

Each of those classifications had a different allowable quantity, ranging from 20 tonnes down to six tonnes, leaving everyone unclear regarding what quantity was permitted or how many litres that would translate to.

The HSNO allowed any quantity of diesel on farms, as long as the correct signs were displayed when storing more than 1000 litres or 10,000 litres.

Meanwhile the Resource Management Act had recently been amended to delete district council functions over hazardous substances, a move that Federated Farmers had been advocating for a long time.