Industrial farming is inappropriate in an area at risk of flooding, opposition group says. David Williams reports.
In the lead-up to Christmas last year, Nicola Duke, a senior consents planner for Canterbury’s regional council, recommended two resource consent applications for composting barns in Canterbury’s Kaituna Valley be given “limited” notification.
Wongan Hills Ltd, owned by Brent Thomas, plans to build four barns, 200m-to-240m long, to house up to 2200 cattle. “There will be animals in the barns all year round,” said Duke’s report, which assessed the environmental effects as minor.
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The proposed development already has city council consent, and Duke’s conclusion for the regional council, ECan, was that notification was necessary because Wairewa Rūnanga, whose marae is located just outside nearby Little River, was an affected party.
Odour was the first issue.
Daily tilling of the compost, although not to its entire 800mm depth, will ensure the sawdust/woodchip bedding material is well-aerated, the report said. Proposed monitoring should ensure anaerobic conditions – lacking oxygen, that is, creating an odour-causing state – are picked up in advance, and changes made.
Contaminating groundwater was deemed to be an issue. No liquid is expected to reach the barn floor, Duke’s report said. When dried compost material is removed every one or two years, and spread on cropping land, it is expected to be “very low in nitrogen”.
(Temperature and moisture are key to good composting, as it leads to evaporation.)
Not far from the barns is the degraded Kaituna River, which drains into Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere, one of the country’s most polluted lakes, which is internationally important for migratory wader bird species.
Obviously, flooding of the barns would not only compromise the composting system, but send potential contaminants into waterways and, ultimately, Te Waihora.
Duke’s report assessed as minor the potential flood risk to the barns and the associated effects on surface water quality.
But her ECan colleagues disagreed.
Four days before Christmas, Hayleigh Brereton, the regional leader of consents delivery, general manager of regulatory services Judith Earl-Goulet, and Zella Smith, the principal planning advisor, released their decision to publicly notify the consents.
“We are concerned that there is potential for water ingress into the barns,” their decision said.
“It’s hard to think of many worse places to put in a feed barn in a rural setting.” – Donald Matheson, Little River Eco Collective
Those concerns are shared by Little River Eco Collective, which opposes the barns proposal. (Little River is about 19km away from the barns, by road, along State Highway 75, and past Wairewa/Lake Forsyth.)
Ahead of public submissions closing with ECan tomorrow at 5pm, Donald Matheson, a member of the group, says he’s worried about the effects of flooding on the Kaituna Valley but also Te Waihora.
“It’s the wrong place, I suppose, is our basic point. If you’re going to do industrial farming, you don’t do it here, in a place that’s at risk of flooding, right next to a really sensitive and very important site of biodiversity, and of high importance to local Māori.
“It’s hard to think of many worse places to put in a feed barn in a rural setting.”
From Duke’s report we know Wairewa Rūnanga has similar concerns.
“Wairewa Rūnanga take a conservative, precautionary approach to activities that could impact on their kaitiakitanga (guardianship) obligations in their takiwā (territory),” the report said.
“The information provided has not satisfied the concerns held by their kaitiakitanga representatives on the inherent uncertainty and potential risks to waterways from the proposed system.”
Already water quality in the Kaituna River and Te Waihora are not at the standard to provide cultural wellbeing.
Charitable consultant firm Mahaanui Kurataio Ltd said on behalf of the rūnanga: “Any discharge of contaminants to water is culturally and spiritually affronting to the mauri (life force) of the water and could compound the cumulative effects on the catchment.”
Animal welfare group Safe also raised concerns. Its submission to ECan said the consent applications will breach legal requirements for the management of cattle, which was unacceptable.
“It is clear that the animal welfare and environmental implications of feedlot systems are not being adequately taken into account.”
Thomas, of Wongan Hills, tells Newsroom: “We have no issue with effects such as potential flooding and odour being properly considered as a part of the consenting process.
“To date the technical work we have undertaken suggests the concerns are unfounded.
“As I noted previously, the use of barns is increasingly common in New Zealand farming systems and all requirements (both RMA and animal welfare) will be met.”
In March last year, Thomas said the barn system would have no effects: “In short, no bobby calves, no nutrient leaching, no odour, excellent animal welfare, and increased jobs and export dollars.”
Thomas’s farming practices in the area have proved controversial.
In 2018, Forest & Bird went to court to protect the rare and threatened shrubby tororaro, after Wongan Hills killed or damaged almost a third of the plant’s national population.
The company sold the farm – presumably for a profit in the millions of dollars – to the Government, which was pursuing a joint venture with rūnanga to develop an aerospace facility.
Thomas’s companies have previously been fined for environmental offences.
Need for precautionary approach
According to Duke’s report, the initial flood modelling of Kaituna Valley by Callum Margetts, a senior scientist at ECan, suggested there could be some flooding, possibly up to a metre in depth, in the vicinity of the barns in a 1-in-200-year event.
Wongan Hills commissioned its own flood-risk modelling from Aqualinc Research, after which it amended its application to lift the barn ramps to try and avoid flooding into the barns’ entrances.
But there was still uncertainty about the amount of water flowing off the hills immediately behind the barns.
Duke’s report stated: “The applicant has stated that they intend to improve the swales [behind the barns] prior to the construction of the barns, and that a new drain system will be installed to capture and divert rainwater from the uphill forestry areas into the existing drains.”
Given the changes, Duke assessed the potential flooding effects on the environment as minor.
The December 21 notification decision by Brereton, Earl-Goulet, and Smith said the remaining uncertainty about flooding “could lead to an unquantified, but potentially more than minor, effect on Te Waihora (Lake Ellesmere)”.
“Te Waihora is a degraded catchment and water quality outcomes are currently not met. Any additional effect in respect of water quality likely to constitute a cumulative effect … that is more than minor.”
The decision to publicly notify the consent was finely balanced, the trio said. They appreciated Wongan Hills had endeavoured to address the potential for flooding, and the proposal didn’t “interact with the wider catchment”, other than the permitted activity of spreading compost material.
“However, given the remaining uncertainty around the potential for flooding, the values associated with the Te Waihora catchment, and the already degraded quality of the potential receiving environment, we consider it appropriate to take a precautionary approach to assessing the risk associated with the proposed activities.”
Matheson, of Little River Eco Collective, adds a little up-to-date context: “With what’s just happened up in Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti, when valleys that very rarely flood, when they catastrophically flood, the impacts are enormous, and we’re seeing more and more of those kinds of catastrophic events.”
