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Manufacturing consents

Posted by Brendon Burns on February 4th, 2010

More developments on the Mackenzie Basin factory farming proposal.

Environment Canterbury was today hearing whether the the three-linked companies water consents can be heard separately to the board of inquiry, annouced by Nick Smith (over the companies’ discharge consents.) http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/3291974/Factory-farm-consent-process-to-begin

Pretty difficult to consider the issues separately. To create the effluent for 1.7m litres of discharge daily you are going to need, er,a shit load of water.

Whether separated or called-in, the factory farming consents should not be heard along with the dozens of other applications for water in the Mackenzie and Waitaki catchments, mostly lodged by local farmers – (unlike the Canterbury and Tauranga based frontmen for the 17,000 cow operations above Lake Ohau); most are not for industrial-scale dairying (although that seems a likely outcome for one water application at Simon’s Hill on the road between Tekapo and Twizel.)

Personally  I think local farmers should be able to access some water to grow a bit of feed in what is the tough country of the Mackenzie Basin – without turning the whole of the magnificent, if barren landscape into an ersatz Waikato.

Meanwhile, a hat tip to solid blogging from Claire Browning at Pundit on this issue, most recently noting that the Waitaki District Council gave the consents for land use for the cubicle dairy farms without any public notification, because it seems it considered only the impacts on people (in a remote-ish setting) rather what such intensive farming would do to the environment.

http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/cubicle-dairy-farming-were-the-secret-consents-unlawful

Also worth reading is a recent Time magazine article Save the Planet: Eat More Beef.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1953692,00.html

No, I’m not advocating eating more beef;  what the article  promotes is  having American cows grass-fed, rather than the current practice of almost all beef (and much dairy) being stall-fed with grain. The article suggests a reversal of this could capture the entire world’s greenhouse gas emissions (scale sounds rather far-fetched) as cows on pasture would trample decaying matter into the soil and keep carbon there. (Note, Fonterra, the maths only work so long as fertilisers aren’t used. And note also, because we don’t currently factory farm, we already have these kind of savings in our emissions profile.)

But hey,  as we begin debating efforts to start serious-level cubicle cow production in this country, the Americans start trying to bring it to an end.

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Filed under: agriculture, climate change, conservation, environment, water
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Mixed signals on Mackenzie factory farms

Posted by Brendon Burns on January 20th, 2010

Could it be that Cabinet divisions are going to stop it responding as it should to factory farming consents in the MacKenzie country?

The NZ Herald reports that Key said after yesterday’s Cabinet that there were ‘mixed opinions’ about intervening in the proposals to house and feed housing 18,000 cows in sheds above Lake Ohau for most of the year.

He would say no more, unsurprisingly. Just recall that a month ago he was  upfront in Parliament about sharing the concerns about environmental impacts, animal welfare issues and of course, Fonterra’s concerns about what such factory farming would do to our multi-billion grass-fed export industry.

You’d think Nick Smith was onto this one with bells on, given those signals.

Instead he’s being coy and cautious. When the approach from ECAN for a possible call-in the factory farms effluent consents was made public, his response was to suggest sending an EPA official.  Good to see Jan Wright, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is now backing a call-in. Smith’s response was to sniffily say she has overlooked that this would cause a disconnect with the water-take consents already heard.

For goodness sake, he’s the lead Minister here. Does not the share the concern the Prime Minister voiced last year, or does he think as Trevor suggested earlier that Smith may have felt  Key was out of line with those  comments. Certainly Key’s comments reflect a Cabinet which has gone from publicly critical to silently cool.

If that leads to a good outcome for the Mackenzie basin’s iconic landscape and pure lakes, so be it. But don’t hold your breath.

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Filed under: agriculture, conservation, environment, water
5 Comments

Govt call-in of factory farming consents

Posted by Brendon Burns on January 7th, 2010

The scale of response to proposals for factory farming in the fragile Mackenzie Basin may see decisions on resource consents go back to Environment Minister Nick Smith for a decision.

I am visiting the Mackenzie Basin today to have a look at the proposals. Before driving down I went into Environment Canterbury to have a look at the resource consents.  While doing so I discovered a December 23 letter from Ecan’s chief executive Dr Bryan Jenkins  to Nick Smith. It covers the current resource consent hearings for three corporate dairy farm operations involving 8000 hectares of land housing 17,000 cows.

Jenkins notes the huge debate about factory farming. Of 3000 submissions on the resource consents, indications are 75 percent are against the housing of cows a la Americana feedlot style.  

Under questioning in the House last month, Agriculture Minister  David Carter said he was seeking  urgent advice on the animal welfare issues raised.

Fonterra and others said housing cattle put at risk  New Zealand’s reputation for pasture fed meat and dairy products.

Jenkins says Ecan’s legal advice is that it can’t consider animal welfare issues as part of a resource consent hearing. But he has asked if  Smith is considering a call-in under Section 142 of the Resource Management Act, which allows the Minister to use call in powers if matters are arousing widespread public concern regarding likely effects on the environment. This is a process where the decision goes back to Government.

I think Smith should give serious consideration to using his call in powers, given all the issues of animal welfare and damage to NZ’s reputation.

He only has a a week to act as the time-frame for a call-in expires for two of the  three corporate dairy applications next week.

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Filed under: agriculture, conservation, environment, local government, water
27 Comments

Food for thought#2

Posted by Brendon Burns on January 2nd, 2010

I’ve posted previously how the debate on the Mackenzie Basin should be more about the huge potential damage that would be done by turning it into dairy farms than putting cows into feedlots.

I’m now revisiting that issue. The spark has been reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by American author Michael Pollan. He  describes buying a calf from a prairie ranch in South Dakota and following it to a Kansas feedlot.

It is a sickening story. Four out of five American beef cattle are now reared on feedlots, usually after having had their first few months of life out on a ranch where they get to eat their natural food – grass. When about six months old, they are shipped to a feedlot and taught how to eat corn. Because cows’ stomachs are designed to digest grass, they need to be given huge quantities of antibiotics to help them cope with corn, grown with huge American taxpayer subsidies.

Oh and the feed mix includes beef tallow (fat), so they are eating their own. Remember how mad cow disease took hold because animals were eating their own species. The mix also includes estrogen, the female hormone. This astounded me.

My father farmed pigs in Wales for five years after WW2. His best mate Stan went to Canada and returned with stories about the quality of life there. He boasted over dinner how he was eating chicken three times a week – unheard of in post-war Britain.

Later, after a couple of whiskies, Stan confided to Dad that there was one downside to life in Canada; he had completely lost his sex drive. Dad thought about that for a while and then suggested it might be linked to eating estrogen-pumped chicken.

Three months later he got a letter from Stan. He said he’d given up chicken and he was back in working order! Yet here we are 50 years later, with North American food still being pumped with estrogen.

Next post. How we have no certainty about the safety of some of our own food.

Filed under: Uncategorized, agriculture, environment, health, water
8 Comments

Rivers of shame

Posted by Brendon Burns on November 26th, 2009

Dompost lead today says it all – Our River of Shame – reporting the Manawatu  tops a new pollution measure of 300 rivers and streams across the Western world. And then on page 3, a re-report of the Health Ministry’s annual survey I’ve previously highlighted, showing one in six Kiwis are drinking substandard or untested water.

Tonight the Dunsandel (Canterbury) community is meeting to discuss the presence of the sometimes fatal e-coli bug in its water supply. I’ll correct this if I am wrong but dairying is the likely cause.

Yet there we were yesterday, under urgency, seeing Parliament rush-pass an ETS which will subsidise and effectively encourage polluters to continue the practices which have already undermined water quality.

It’s not just the Manawatu. An MFE report, using other measures, shows it to be only be our fifth-worst major river for water quality.

Such poor water quality puts at risk our very economic base.

Especially in tough times, European and other farmers and their politicians will be looking for reasons to thwart our exports into their home markets. Dairying and tourism are our two biggest export earners. Each worth nearly $10b a year. Dairying shamelessly uses the clean green image in its marketing, even if the state of the Manawatu and other rivers shows we are a long way short.

There does seem to be some agreement here about getting things right. Federated Farmers president Don Nicholson says in the latest Feds magazine that sustainability is the competitive advantage of New Zealand farmers “and we must put up and stand by standards that go beyond the minimum.”

But try telling farmers to cut nitrate use (equals production) – which lies at the heart of what’s happening in the Manawatu. I don’t want to see New Zealand lose export dollars. Dairying contributes hugely to our economy – and its not the only polluter – but it is the elephant in the room. And we cannot ignore some of the awful results for river and stream quality coming from dairy-dominated land use. Even if we do, the rest of the world will not.

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Filed under: economy, environment, water
14 Comments

Hide confirms water privatisation

Posted by Phil Twyford on November 17th, 2009

Rodney Hide confirmed in question time today that Cabinet’s decision to allow Auckland’s super city council to privatise its $5 billion water company from 2015 stands despite earlier suggestions to the contrary.

Two weeks ago in the Herald it appeared Hide was saying this decision had been superceded by a later decision. But the Cabinet minutes don’t bear it out.

I’ll link to the transcript here as soon as it appears on line.  See my earlier post for background.

This is strange. Did Hide mean to confirm that privatisation decision stands? He has been under a lot of pressure lately.

Here are the facts:

  • On October 19 Cabinet supported Rodney Hide and decided to allow the new Auckland Council to move to privatise its water assets after 2015.
  • A week later, Cabinet took a completely contradictory position and refused to support Rodney Hide’s proposed change to the Local Government Act (LGA) which would enable full privatisation of local government water assets nationwide. Instead they made a series of changes to loosen the controls on public-private partnerships in the water sector.
  • On November 9, following an interview with Rodney Hide, the Herald reported that while Cabinet approved the privatisation of $5 billion worth of Auckland’s water assets, it was over-turned by the subsequent LGA decision.

Mr Hide or the Prime Minister need to clarify exactly what is going on.

Update: Late this afternoon the Minister’s office released a statement saying that Councils’ responsibilities for providing water supplies will not be changed by recent Cabinet decisions including the one on October 19 to “allow the new Auckland Council to determine from 2015 the governance arrangements and asset ownership for the delivery of water services”.  Mr Hide says now there is no intention to over ride the provisions of the Local Government Act that prohibit privatisation of water assets. That’s a relief.

But strange then, that after talking with Mr Hide two weeks ago the NZ Herald was clearly left with the impression that the intention of the October 19 Cabinet decision was to allow for privatisation from 2015. The Herald reported as such and the Minister of Local Government has taken two weeks to issue a clarification. Odd.

It is also strange that the Cabinet Minute of October 19 purports to allow the Auckland Council to determine the asset ownership and structure of the water company from 2015. Why, if it didn’t intend to override the Local Government Act and allow privatisation, did Cabinet need to spell out what the Auckland Council would be able to do anyway, that is change the structure of one of its own organisations?

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Filed under: Auckland, local government, privatisation, water
23 Comments

Is this man fit to be Minister of Local Government?

Posted by Phil Twyford on November 7th, 2009

hide-smirk-revForget the shonky fundraising practices where he charged $45 to hear him talk about his ministerial portfolio.

Don’t worry about the fact that the one time perk buster spent $60,000 of taxpayers’ money on a round the world trip with his girlfriend, timed to coincide with her brother’s wedding, touring international capitals to talk about the super city and lecture right wing think tanks.

So what that the man who made his career campaigning against MPs’ travel privileges used those same privileges to take his girlfriend to Hawaii, costing $10,000, and quietly paid it back last week, not mentioning it in all the public debate about his round the world trip.

Never mind about his blow-hard bragging to ACT party members that the prime minister “doesn’t do anything” and was highly regarded, while “ACT did everything and we are hated” and that he was amazed at how much he could get through Cabinet, because “you turn up with your papers” and “they are too busy with their own stuff they’re not bothered”.

These are matters for Mr Hide and the voters of Epsom to consider.

What makes me question his fitness to be Minister of Local Government is the barking mad right wing agenda he is pursuing.

With the blessing of John Key’s Cabinet Hide is loosening the controls on the privatisation of water to encourage ‘build, own, operate and transfer’ (BOOT) schemes which will allow private companies to own our water infrastructure for up to 35 years at a time.

This from a Government that has denied they had any plans for privatisation of local government assets, and voted down my anti-asset sales member’s bill because they said there was no threat of privatisation. They said Labour was scaremongering.

Eighty eight percent of Aucklanders are opposed to any privatisation of council water systems. To proceed with this policy after repeated denials of any privatisation plans is dishonest and undemocratic.

But wait there is more. He actually recommended to Cabinet the removal of nearly all controls on the privatisation on water. Never mind BOOT schemes, Hide wanted to open the door to wholesale disposal of water systems to the private sector. And the repeal of obligations on councils to retain control of pricing, management and policy on delivery of water services. He recommended this against the advice of Local Government NZ, and the Ministry of Health.  Barking mad.

So should we be grateful Key’s Cabinet  didn’t go all the way with Hide’s privatisation agenda and opted for extending private ownership of water assets to 35 years?  Should we be grateful for a disaster just because we averted a catastrophe?

Hide is, I believe, unfit to be Minister of Local Government on the basis of his extremist ideology. But you can’t blame him for disregarding the views of the huge majority of New Zealanders. The man only needs 5% of the vote to keep a grip on the baubles of office.

As Prime Minister, John Key is supposed to govern in the interests of all New Zealanders.  It is Key who allowed Hide’s resignation threat to determine the Government’s decision on Maori seats in the super city.  It is Key’s Government that has imposed their flawed and undemocratic super city on Aucklanders. It is Key’s Cabinet who signed off the plans for water privatisation. He is responsible.

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Filed under: Auckland, local government, privatisation, water
32 Comments

Crying over spilt milk

Posted by Sue Moroney on September 19th, 2009

Talley’s-owned Open Country Cheese was caught pouring sludge from its factory in Waharoa directly into the Waitoa River this morning because it insists on using scab labour to keep production going instead of paying standard industry wages and giving some job security to its staff.

The use of untrained staff during this dispute has now polluted the river and we’ll all have to pay through our rates in the Waikato to have it cleaned up.

Apparently, sludge which is normally collected by trucks and spread on farms, has poured into the river instead.

That river runs down the back of the dairy farm I was brought up on. I just hope the environmental damage is reversible.

I certainly know that OCCs harsh stance against its staff can be reversed, so I’ll be heading over to join the picket line tomorrow.

Now OCC has proven to be irresponsible on two fronts – firstly they undermine the industry with sub-standard wages and conditions and now they think they can pollute the waterways.

That’s a disgrace.

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Filed under: Manufacturing, conservation, environment, jobs, labour, union, waikato, water
27 Comments

Win/win water strategy

Posted by Brendon Burns on September 3rd, 2009

The Canterbury Water Management Strategy released today presents the potential of a win/win way forward.

It has a balanced approach to environmental and economic outcomes. I take my hat off to strategy chair Bede O’Malley and the other members of the strategy team. They have worked collaboratively and delivered a visionary statement which acknowledges that past practices have been damaging and the first thing that must happen is to begin to restore the quality of Canterbury’s waterways.  Any further applications for harnessing water deserve the same collaborative, community-driven approach.

Just yesterday I visited the Opuha Dam in South Canterbury which is a good example of a community-initiated water scheme that almost everyone supports and benefits from.

That said, we would want to ensure that the strategy’s ten proposed new water zones all work to regional criteria, have broad community and stakeholder representation and meet or exceed national minimum water and environmental standards.

We do need to be wary of having too many layers of administration. Not only would there be 10 zone committees, a Regional Water Management Committee and Ecan – there is also the Government’s proposal for an Environmental Protection Agency.

But these are details to be worked through. It’s great that Canterbury stakeholders from environmental groups, the Feds, councils and others have developed a strategy with broad support which provides the capacity to improve our waterways and deliver sustainable growth into our future.

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Filed under: environment, water
8 Comments

A small victory on the water?

Posted by Brendon Burns on September 2nd, 2009

Was there sufficient small community backlash to overturn Bill English and Treasury imposing an immediate  hard line on gutting the scheme to help small communities make their drinking water safe? 

Yesterday Tony Ryall announced that he is reviewing the subsidies Labour put in place, though the 71 communities already being considered for funds would now be assessed under existing criteria. Answers to written questions from me a couple of weeks ago in fact affirmed that those existing communities would have to await the outcome of the review before any funding. 

 Many  marae are among the current applicants – and will be among the communities most affected by the looming cuts. My information is that Treasury is suggesting a $1000 per capita maximum. If a marae has 50 permanent residents, they might from next year get somewhere around $50,000 - often not enough to make a water supply meet World Health Organisation minimums.  At the moment, if it is a low-decile marae or small community, subsidies of up to 95 percent of the cost can be paid by Government.  Councils with mid-decile communities who were banking on the scheme to help meet the cost will be most affected. In the House last week, Ryall tried to suggest “millionaire” communities were getting funds. They might get a 5 percent contribution but the scheme is already weighted to help low-mid decile communities. 

The Ministry of Health is clearly worried by the clout both English and Hide are exercising – Hide describes the new WHO minimum standards as “ridiculous.”  There have been four Ministry of Health reports written since May on the public health risks posed by the review of funding. When its added to the current three year moratorium on meeting the WHO minimums, Ryall is playing a dangerous game. He maintains that drinking water standards are a local government responsibility – but then pushes out the boundaries and cuts the support. When a serious outbreak of water-borne illness inevitably occurs – and New Zealand already has some of the highest case numbers in the developed world -  he will not be able to wash his hands of it.

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Filed under: M?ori, Uncategorized, infrastructure, local government, water
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