Federated Farmers slam Canterbury nitrate emergency

Federated Farmers vice president Colin Hurst says ECan’s decision won’t help anyone.

“It’s incredibly disappointing to see Environment Canterbury (ECan) playing these kinds of petty political games,” he said in a statement.

"Declaring a nitrate emergency isn’t helpful or constructive. All it will do is create unnecessary panic and drive a wedge between our urban and rural communities.

Federated Farmers’ national dairy chair, Karl Dean, a Canterbury dairy farmer, noted that while the latest figures show 62% of wells getting worse, the figure from the equivalent study three years ago was 75%.

“So, the question is, why wasn’t there an emergency declared then, as opposed to now? That’s where it just comes down to this political grandstanding, and the council should have rejected it. It’s absolutely atrocious,” he told Dairy News.

The outgoing council made the declaration at its last meeting before breaking up for the local body elections.

The motion, from Cr Vicky Southworth, called for the next council to make more rapid progress on nitrate reduction in groundwater, including options to put more of the costs of removing nitrate from drinking water onto nitrate polluters. It passed nine votes to seven.

Asked what practical difference the declaration would make, Southworth told Dairy News that she proposed the motion as a way of raising the profile of the issue and creating a focus for the next council to keep it in the forefront of their minds.

Southworth said farmers seemed to begin to acknowledge the need for good management practises about 10 years ago.

“Now we’re 10 years in and we’re seeing 62% of the wells across Canterbury still on an increasing nitrate trend.

“I absolutely, fully know that there are people doing good stuff. Some more than others. But the trend is still going in the wrong way on a lot of wells.”

While Southworth is not herself standing for re-election, Dean still believed it was political grandstanding on behalf of the mainly urban councillors who voted for it.

“The emergency gives them something to vote on, or for their fellow potential councillors to campaign on,” he says.

Dean also questioned how much practical difference the declaration would make.

He said that while it would give council staff some instructions on what to do, it looked very much like business as usual, with tasks that they should already be doing.

Nitrates were known to be an issue since the 1960s when the first nitrates research was conducted at Lincoln, he said. Farmers knew there was a problem but it was a “long road” to effect change.