Councils Failing To Clean Up Our Environment

Fish & Game
New Zealand said a report released today by the
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment revealing
large scale environmental degradation from intensive
agriculture, showed that the agricultural sector needed to
urgently remedy the damage they were causing, and that it
was also an indictment on Regional Councils.

The
Commissioner, Dr Morgan Williams, launched the report
“Growing for Good? The sustainability of intensive farming
in New Zealand.” The Report says the rapid expansion in the
use of nitrogen fertilisers, increased stocking rate, and
increased irrigation were threatening New Zealand’s soils
and freshwater. The Report says there is strong evidence
that New Zealand waterways are becoming nutrient enriched
and degraded from animal faecal matter and nitrogen.

Says
Neil Deans Fish & Game spokesperson: “The Report supports
what Fish & Game has been saying all along that land
intensification cannot continue on its current scale without
serious impacts on our natural resources.”

“There has been
a virtual revolution in farming, particularly with the
growth of massive dairy agribusinesses, the scale of which
even takes some farmers by surprise. We support Dr Williams’
call for a fundamental redesign of farming practices and
systems. The agricultural sector which is raking in money
from this level of rapid growth needs to take responsibility
for the damage it is causing. Not only from a social
responsibility point of view, but also the potential damage
to our overseas sales. They are not doing
enough.”

“Another critical element arising from this
growing level of environmental damage has been poor local
governmental management. Regional Councils have been
pitifully slow to control the impacts of this agricultural
revolution.”

“They are carrying out insufficient
scientific work on the effects of such large scale change
and making significant decisions on the basis of very poor
environmental information. Some Regional Councils grant
lengthy resource consents, for 35 years, with little
understanding of the long term effects.”

“Regional
Councils are not responding fast or comprehensively enough
to reduce nitrogen pollution. In the Waikato, for example,
$63 million of nitrogen is lost each year”.

“This Report,
and the recent NIWA report which said that almost all
lowland waterways have pollution levels that exceed health
standards are a wake-up call to the public and politicians.
It just proves how necessary Fish & Game’s Dirty Dairying
campaign was.” “How can we brand ourselves as ‘clean and
green and 100 percent’ pure when the evidence shows us as
dirty and brown”, says Mr Deans.

“This expansion in farm
productivity is based on cheap energy which makes New
Zealand very vulnerable economically. Along with cleaning up
our environment the agricultural sector needs to urgently
look at conserving energy and being less
wasteful.”

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