Editorial: Nitrate emergency?

Coming weeks before the local government elections, farmers are rightly calling it an election stunt. Federated Farmers goes further and claims that some ECan councillors clearly see this as an opportunity to score cheap political points and push an anti-farming agenda.

What happens in a nitrate emergency? According to ECan’s website, as a result of this vote (7 to 5 in favour), staff will bring a workshop to the next term of council “to outline the scale, causes, spatial distribution, latest lag time research, and current and predicted impacts of nitrate pollution in Canterbury to enable a well-informed discussion and development of key steps we can take to make more rapid progress on nitrate reduction in groundwater”.

“Staff will also prepare advice for council about the cost for drinking water suppliers and private well owners of treating nitrate-enriched groundwater or finding low-nitrate water sources, and how these costs could be distributed”.

In other words, more financial burden for regional farmers and the risk of undermining the good work they’ve been doing with councils, iwi and the wider community over the last few decades.

Farmers aren’t disputing that Canterbury has an issue with nitrates. It’s a longstanding challenge that farmers and the community have been working on.

But to suddenly come out and call it an ‘emergency’ raises eyebrows. Why didn’t ECan declare a nitrate emergency at the beginning of their term and take steps over the past three years?

Passing a nitrate emergency at their last council meeting before the election certainly looks like a political stunt.

One farmer hit the nail on the head on Facebook saying, “there was an ‘oxygen emergency’ at the council table when they passed this gem”.