A very recent Radio NZ report of 26 January has told of Waikato farmers being warned to clean up their farms. Recently seven farms across the Waikato have been prosecuted under the Resource Management Act for discharging farm effluent into the environment. One of them was Trinity Lands Limited, whose chief executive Peter McBride, is also the chairman of Fonterra.Trinity Lands was convicted after a complaint from a member of the public, in relation to over-application of effluent on a farm at Tirau in October 2019.
The company was fined $46,900 by Judge Melinda Dickey in the Tokoroa District Court with the sentence formally issued on last week.
Waikato Council regional compliance manager Patrick Lynch said corporate farmers should be leading the way and setting the standards for others in the industry.
“The larger your enterprise, the larger potential risk to the environment if things aren’t managed well and we are asking all farmers to be vigilant and all farmers to have good systems and manage them well,” Lynch said.
“And of course if you are a multiple farm owner, our expectations are across all of those farms all of the time.”
Peter McBride, Fonterra chairman – photo “Farmers Weekly”
Are New Zealand’s scientific experts really dead – or just resting?
From TheSpinoff
The row over Jacqueline Rowarth’s strange suggestion that the Waikato River is one of the world’s five cleanest reveals a need for more scientists to be heard in public, not fewer, writes Shaun Hendy.
In post-Brexit Britain, failure to heed the warnings of economists on the risks of leaving the EU has spawned many a thinkpiece on the death of the expert. Indeed, experts might be forgiven for ending it all after a British scientist who pointed out that the moon causes the tides was called out by a UKIP MP and accused of fear-mongering. Britain may have once ruled the waves, but now finds itself ruled by folk who find waves a little bit confusing.
Here in New Zealand, we know full well that the tides are caused by the decision of the previous Labour government to extend daylight saving. And with minds untroubled by tidal forces, Kiwis have had time to contemplate a deeper question:
Why are our rivers full of shit?
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/04-11-2016/science-experts-waikato-jacqueline-rowarth/
Is that egg on the face? If you take on these public positions, you must be squeaky clean, otherwise its “eggs-actly” embarrassing.
Watercare only prosecuting ‘significant’ waste consent breaches
Auckland’s Watercare says about 24 companies each month are caught breaching their trade waste consents, but it won’t reveal their names.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/435344/watercare-only-prosecuting-significant-waste-consent-breaches