New Zealand goes after dairy farm polluters

Monday, December 3, 2012

There are 390 dairy farms in the Otaga District of New Zealand's South Island and, in the last year, the Regional Council issued 35 infringement notices and brought 19 pollution prosecutions against them, up from seven the year before.

The charges were mostly for discharging contaminants into water, according to The Regions newspaper, and were laid under the Resource Management Act.

Fines totalled nearly NZ$180,000, with 90 per cent of the fines going to the Regional Council. According to the article, the Regional Council received $678,000 in fines from courts last year, with some fines dating back to 2008. The council says it is not "revenue collecting" with the fines. In total last year, prosecutions cost the council nearly $692,000. In one case, where the charges were defended, prosecution cost $107,000 for staff time, legal costs and hiring outside witnesses. Another case cost more than $51,000.

There are 12,000 dairy farms in the country. The number of dairy cows in New Zealand has more than doubled since the mid-1970s, when there were 18,000 farms, to well over four million, and there are concerns that the current national herd is not sustainable because of environmental degradation from runoff into rivers. BF