Bluntly speaking
OPINION: Sometimes blunt instruments are just exactly what you need. That's why you'll find them in toolboxes and sheds – for tasks that needn't, or shouldn't, or just plain can't be carried out with surgical precision and exquisite delicacy.
Federated Farmers needn't expend effort trying to convince anybody that it would be, as Southland dairy chairman Vaughan Templeton says, a "blunt instrument approach" if Environment Southland were to permit any more dairy development around the increasingly degraded Waituna Lagoon.
Of course it would be. We get that. But Mr Templeton needs to understand that we're at the stage now where the public find themselves looking longingly for a heavy hand to come into play.
For pity's sake, this is not a problem that has come upon us by stealth, only now to be revealed in all its horror. Warning voices have long since grown hoarse. This problem has existed for years, and deteriorated badly right before our eyes and, yes, on our watch.
So the invitation should issue to anyone who seeks to persuade the regional council, or for that matter the rest of Southland, against the notion that we need to act quickly and decisively, that they better make their case sharpishly.Mr Templeton says the federation would rather see farming carried out under conditions that "try to minimise" the problem.
We should have a care with what we accept when we talk about minimisation.
This cannot be one of those cases where there's either a tacit or explicit understanding that, Jeez, there's only so much you can do.
Waituna is a precious wetland of international significance, and widely enjoyed by locals as well as visitors. It's an important habitat for birds, fish and, OK, eels. It is also home to unusual plants and has a useful regulating role, soaking up water after heavy rain.
It's been said that wetlands are the earth's kidneys; in which case Waituna is getting perilously close to renal failure, going from a clear-water ecosystem to a murky, algae-dominated, deadened disgrace.
Environment Southland is far from uninterested in mitigation tactics, but we have to acknowledge that this is hardly new thinking.
The Waituna Landcare Group already exists and has been working hard to address the problem, but there is scant environmental indication to rebut a suggestion of tippytoeing around the essential problem.
The regional council is considering not only halting further dairy farm development in the catchment, but also thumping much weightier controls on existing dairying operations.
You won't find many Southlanders throwing up their hands in horror at such a thought.
Environment Southland's chairwoman Ali Timms says co-operation from landowners and government agencies is needed.
Is there even time? Sometimes, if you ignore a problem it actually does go away.
The less often cited flipside of that is that if you ignore a solution, it can go away, too.
Waituna needs to be saved. That's a big ask, and the solution is liable to require Environment Southland to be ungentle.
- The Southland Times
Mr Templeton will be feeling a little set-upon I imagine (especially if he's read the comments section of yesterday's article) and he ought to, in my opinion. His response was not a wise one. Revealing, but not wise.
* Comments section from yesterday' story has some pointed advice.
Brigitte #7 06:20 pm Feb 14 2011
Its not just Waituna that needs protection from the cows, the whole of Southland does with all its water-ways and tributarys etc. Sh*t is just that -sh*t, and with cows its is abundant. It literally runs out of them, gone are the days off a good old firm cowpat, not to mention the stuff that ends up on the cow pads and in the dairy shed, all hosed down with huge quantities of water and respread over the pasture! Water goes one way on land - down! And eventually it seeps into the ground water. No matter what the dairy giants or farmers do to minimise it, cow waste will always end up in the water supply somewhere, that is if there is enough of it left after they have sucked most of it out to help run and clean the dairy shed. Back to beef and sheep I say!
