Taranaki Regional councillor Donna Cram doubts farms are biggest river polluters

Farmer Dean Goble makes a point to Taranaki Regional Council's Jose Reader, while fellow farmer Matthew Grayling looks on. Photo / Te Korimako o Taranaki

By Craig Ashworth, Local Democracy Reporter

A Taranaki regional councillor has questioned whether farms are the region’s biggest river polluters, at a meeting to talk about cleaning up waterways.

As Ōkato farmers met council science staff to discuss future freshwater rules, councillor Donna Cram doubted most of the pollution was coming from farms.

Her comment came after senior staff made it clear at Taranaki Regional Council (TRC) meetings that agriculture is the biggest culprit.

“I don’t think that was said at the council table,” Cram told Local Democracy Reporting when questioned about it.

The council’s environmental quality director Abby Matthews has been publicly consistent since at least September 2022 that most testing sites with high E. coli levels are contaminated by farm animals.

E. coli lives in the gut of warm-blooded animals and Matthews told TRC’s Policy and Planning committee that regulations demand councils reduce bacterial contamination.

“Keeping stock out of waterways, improving effluent discharges, looking at critical source areas on-farm – so dairy-shed effluent, laneways, places like that – are always going to be your best bang for buck.”

Cram was until recently on Taranaki Federated Farmers’ executive and was 2023 Fonterra Dairy Woman of the Year. She now sits on the Policy and Planning committee helping reshape freshwater rules.

Donna Cram was Fonterra's dairy woman of the year 2023 but questioned if farmers are really to blame for river pollution and whether it was really killing off macroinvertebrates. Photo / NZME

LDR asked Cram – as a regional councillor charged with protecting waterways – about the science that shows macroinvertebrates (bugs) are dying off in two-thirds of streams monitored by her council.

“I don’t entirely agree with what you’re saying,” Cram responded, adding she didn’t want to talk such details “without having everything in front of me”.

Hempton Hall was open to all for TRC’s first drop-in session on proposed rules for levels of E. coli, nutrients and sediments in waterways, and on water allocation.

A concentration of Red Band gumboots showed up to the morning meeting on Monday, June 17.

Matthew Grayling, who farms on Pitone Rd below State Highway 45, didn’t know the limits being proposed.

“I haven’t looked at the nutrient levels yet, but we’ve all changed, I suppose, to less nutrients,” said Grayling.

“We’re not big nitrogen users, so we’re under 80 kilograms of hectare anyway, well within this.”

Matthew Grayling reckons farmers are ready to change if allowance is made for widely varying farms. Photo / Te Korimako o Taranaki

Between 2011 and 2020, nitrate concentrations increased at four out of every five TRC monitoring sites because of decades of heavy nitrogen fertiliser use, and the chemicals are making their way into surface water.

“I’m a bit sceptical on E. coli, I suppose, because birds seem to have a lot to do with it as well. But we seem to be the ones that get hammered.”

E. coli loads in streams across Taranaki must halve to reach minimum standards - and be slashed up to 80% in some catchments.

E. coli bacteria thrives in poo pollution, makes you sick, and indicates other dangerous pathogens.

All farmers put their feedback stickers in the same boxes on TRC’s information boards: give those who need it time to install the expensive water infrastructure, and make sure rules allow for differences on farms.

Grayling said some farmers will be worried.

“It’s a lot harder up against the mountains, where the rainfall’s high, and you’ve got other issues to deal with than, say, the coastal boy, and sediment out east.”

TRC says some eastern hill country rivers probably will never meet sediment bottom lines.

Dean Goble farms cows at Tataraimaka – or ‘Tatramak’ as he calls it – and agreed that things have to get better.

“We’ve all got to bloody look after the place and it’s good to have the regional council come around and do this because you don’t see them very often.”

Goble said all farmers are doing their bit.

“We’re custodians of land. We don’t own the land. We are just looking after it and scratching the dust and doing our bit while we’re here.”

Not all those at the drop-in session were farmers.

Puniho Pa trustee and environmental educator Tane Manukonga said farmers need a groundswell of community opinion to encourage change and TRC's drop-in session was a start. Photo / Te Korimako o Taranaki

Tāne Manukonga is kaiwhakahaere of Te Ara Taiao environmental education and also a trustee of Puniho Pā and representative of Ngā Mahanga hapū.

“I think it’s long overdue, this type of consultation. We need more of it, and not just when they need to go through making decisions, it needs to be a bit more consistent over time.”

Manukonga said he turned up because the community needed to get behind farmers keen on change.

“It’s this younger generation that are coming through that are knowing the current state, knowing they can do better. And it’s actually having the community support that will drive these younger ones to do better.

“He tīmata noa iho [it’s just the beginning].”

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air