One Plan limit on leaching not enforced

Horizons Regional Council

The dairy industry and Horizons Regional Council agreed to remove figures that would easily highlight how much farmers were exceeding environmental limits under the One Plan.

The Chronicle has obtained an email which highlights a plan to leave nitrogen limits out of resource-consent documents because it had the "potential to cause significant harm to the industry" if compared with what the farm was actually leaching.

The council's One Plan brought in limits on the nitrogen leaching for intensive farming in the region after a decade of hearings and legal challenges. But the Chronicle revealed last week the majority of farms didn't meet controlled consent conditions and had been given restricted discretionary consents to leach nitrogen at up to three times the One Plan limit.

An email sent from Dairy NZ project manager Geoff Taylor to farmers, industry representatives and Horizons staff in July last year said it had agreed with the council not to include nitrogen limits on consent documents so it could not be compared with the farm's actual nitrogen leaching rate.

"This was seen to be a risk if the gap between what the farmer was actually targeting and the target as set by the table was too wide," the email said. "Under an official information request this was seen to be easily discoverable with the potential to cause harm to the industry."

But consents which did meet the One Plan would retain the limits, the email said.

Mr Taylor yesterday said at the time there was tension because a lot of farmers knew they wouldn't meet One Plan targets under an updated nutrient modelling system, where previously it was thought the majority of farmers would.

"I think there might have been some farmer input into that," he said. "That was one of the concerns that farmers had.

"If (people) didn't have the background you could look at that without understanding the new process. (People) could be quite alarmed."

Mr Taylor said Dairy NZ and Horizons wanted to have a workable programme. "Part of being workable is to make sure that the people that you are working with aren't getting wound up about stuff like a table in the supporting information that they just can't achieve."

Horizons Regional Council chief executive Michael McCartney said if the email was from Dairy NZ it might not be appropriate to comment on and he would need to see the email first.

The One Plan combined the regional council's policy statement, regional coastal plan and regional plan into one document and for the first time required intensive farming operations to have consent.