Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Dirty dairying farmers start cleaning up

Updated at 7:34 am on 19 September 2012

The Canterbury Regional Council says there has been a steady improvement in the past year in dairy farms complying with dairy shed effluent management rules.

Between July 2011 and May 2012, compliance officers visited nearly 1000 properties without prior warning to check on storage systems, how well effluent ponds are sealed and how far they are from a waterway.

Council resource management director Kim Drummond says monitoring in the Opihi area in South Canterbury found that 77% of the 312 farms surveyed complied with their resource consent compared with a 70% average for the rest of Canterbury.

Mr Drummond says in most cases where staff visit a property and find that a farmer is not complying with the effluent management rules, steps are taken to improve effluent disposal systems and the management of ponds.

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