28,850 copies distributed monthly – to every rural mailbox in Canterbury and the West Coast.
January 2014
INSIDE ‘Reasonable balance’ struck Page 4
Songs of a wild colonial past Page 8
Sweet taste of success
in new regional water plan
By Hugh de Lacy
Farmers, including those on irrigated land, will be able to live with Environment Canterbury’s (Ecan’s) long-awaited land and water regional plan, according to the chief executive of Irrigation New Zealand, Andrew Curtis. Last month Ecan’s government-appointed councillors approved the Hearing Commissioners’ plan to control the leaching of nitrates from farming into the region’s water courses and lakes. The plan requires farmers and other land-users to manage their operations so that the current decline in the quality of the region’s water will be reversed.
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The acceptance of the Canterbury plan follows years of contentious manoeuverings to reduce heavy pollution levels in Canterbury, no less than the Manawatu-Whanganui and Waikato regions. “The plan does strike a reasonable balance between the environment and the economic side,” Curtis told Canterbury Farming, “but you wouldn’t want the region to be held under that regime for too long. “We need to get on and get the sub-regional chapters in place.” The Land and Water Regional Plan, which becomes operative later this year, depending on appeals, sets standards across the whole region, with more detailed
plans being prepared for specific catchments and sub-regions.
issues are in a given sub-region the stronger the rules will be.
The Hurunui-Waiau subregion plan is already in place, and Selwyn-Waihora is close to having its plan completed.
The wider plan has been created under the Canterbury Water Management Strategy by councillors appointed by the Government after the urbandominated elected council was sacked for being unable to reach agreement on a way forward in managing the region’s water resources.
Sub-region plans are also under way for Ashburton-Hinds, Lower Waitaki/south-coastal Canterbury, the upper Waitaki, and Wairewa/Lake Forsythe. The overall plan was devised on the basis of outcomes rather than inputs, and extends to urban no less than rural and farming areas. For example it contains rules aimed at cleaning up stormwater and sewage overflows in Christchurch, and also covers a range of factors from on-site wastewater to the storing of hazardous substances. The sub-regional plans are expected to be completed and come into force around 2017 with a series of target numbers setting out good management practices right across the region’s range of climates, land types and land uses. The target numbers for each sub-region are expected to become available next year, and will be based on the principle that the more serious the water
The strategy also covers the wider implications of land and water use in the region, including the need to assist in the recovery from the 2010-2011 earthquakes, and issues such as land stability, biodiversity and flood protection. Irrigation NZ’s Curtis said that from the farmer’s perspective any devils will lie in the detail of the sub-regional chapters of the plan. “The sub-regional level is actually the important bit because that’s where things happen that really matter,” he said. From the on-farm perspective, the use of the nutrient management software tool Overseer, which is available for free, will be central to farmers implementing the plan.
Overseer is a computer modelling programme that estimates the nutrient flows in a farming system to identify the risk of environmental impacts of especially nitrate nutrient losses from run-off and leaching, and from greenhouse gas emissions. “To us, Overseer is basically a drafting gate — it’s not an absolute number that farmers should be reaching,” Curtis said. “If you’re not achieving a certain level you should be taking a harder look at what you’re doing. “We get worried when people say it’s an absolute number that you have to reach, because every farm is different and it’s quite hard to put farmers into boxes.” He said there was also a danger with computer models that “people will play games
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with them, and that’s not going to solve the problems.” Overseer has been under development since the 1990s and is jointly owned by the Ministry for Primary Industries, AgResearch and the Fertiliser Association of New Zealand. It began as the Computerised Fertiliser Advisory Service (CFAS) but has evolved into a support tool that produces farm-specific environmental indicators applicable not only to individual farms but also to regional land and water use planning. The owners describe it as ‘A robust, science-based decision and policy support tool that is widely used for improving farm profitability, organising nutrient use and minimising impact on air, soil and water quality’.