Otago Regional Council rolling out proposal to radically change its approach
(Southern Rural Life – Wed May 12th)
“OTAGO Regional Council (ORC) is contemplating a radical departure from its present approach to managing environmental water quality.
It no longer wants to take a prescriptive approach -telling landowners what they must do to protect water quality – because it sees this as ineffective
Rather, it says it wants landowners to be free to chose how they use the land , provided discharges – surface run-off, groundwater seepage and discharge from drains – meet water quality standards which the council will set.”
Farmers, it seems, aren’t interested. Two meetings have been arranged and 1000’s of invitations sent. The first meeting has been cancelled through lack of response.
“If Otago Regional Council (ORC) adopts an effects-based method of water-quality management it will be difficult to implement fairly and only impose further costs on farmers, a North Otago dairy farmer says”.
The ORC believes that they will pre-empt the Government by implementing this system. They expect the Government to bring this approach in when it decides on it’s national water quality strategy.
This mirrors moves in the fishing industry to establish an ‘outcomes’ based system that allows the industries to ‘do as the will’, provided the certain standards are met. The fishermen seem enthusiastic, the farmers do not. Curious!