increase font size
Waikato Regional Council responds to a piggery effluent discharge in August 2023.
Waikato Regional Council is taking Te Aroha piggery farm to court following an investigation into the discharge of effluent into a stream.
The prosecution has been taken under the Resource Management Act and comes because of an active investigation by the council into alleged ongoing, uncontrolled and unauthorised discharges to both land and water over the past six months.
It’s alleged the effluent entered the Patuwhao Stream which flows to the Waihou River, resulting in the council urging downstream landowners with surface water takes to exercise caution until the risk passed.
An interim Enforcement Order from the Environment Court, issued by Judge Melinda Dickey on Friday 4 August remains in place. It requires the piggery company to cease discharging a contaminant onto land in circumstances which may result in it entering water.
Regional compliance manager Patrick Lynch says staff have been carrying out regular inspections of the site.
“There has been some improvement,” he says. “The volume and frequency of the discharges has decreased, though there is still work to do and we will continue to monitor activities on the site.”
“It’s important we do not jeopardise the matter before the court, so we will not be able to provide any further detail at this time,” he adds.
Remediation NZ (RNZ) has been fined more than $71,000 for discharging offensive odours described by neighbours as smelling like ‘faecal and pig effluent’ from its compositing site near Uruti in North Taranaki.
A Taranaki farmer and livestock agent who illegally swapped NAIT tags from cows infected with a bovine disease in an attempt to sell the cows has been fined $15,000.
Two farmers and two farming companies were recently convicted and fined a total of $108,000 for environmental offending.
Rawhiti Environmental Park Limited has been convicted on eight charges and fined a total of $437,000 for persistent discharges of raw piggery effluent into the environment between February and October 2023.
A farm owner and two former Waikato contract milkers were recently fined $27,000 over a lack of feed for 230 cattle and a lack of treatment for cows suffering from milk fever.
DairyNZ Chair Tracy Brown has seen a lot of change since she first started out in the dairy sector, with around one-third of dairy farmers now women.
Castle Ridge Station has been named the Regional Supreme Winner at the Canterbury Ballance Farm Environment Awards.
The South Island Dairy Event has announced Jessica Findlay as the recipient of the BrightSIDE Scholarship Programme, recognising her commitment to furthering her education and future career in the New Zealand dairy industry.
New Zealand and Chile have signed a new arrangement designed to boost agricultural cooperation and drive sector success.
New DairyNZ research will help farmers mitigate the impacts of heat stress on herds in high-risk regions of the country.
Budou are being picked now in Bridge Pā, the most intense and exciting time of the year for the Greencollar team – and the harvest of the finest eating grapes is weeks earlier than expected.
OPINION: A mate of yours truly reckons rural Manawatu families are the latest to suffer under what he calls the…
OPINION: If old Winston Peters thinks building trade relations with new nations, such as India, isn't a necessary investment in…
