Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: Radio New Zealand

A Waikato pig farm has been fined $437,000 for persistent discharges of raw piggery effluent into the environment, including sewage tanks overflowing into waterways.

Rawhiti Environmental Park was convicted on eight charges in the Hamilton District Court on Thursday under the Resource Management Act.

The 810-hectare piggery near Te Aroha was subject to a years-long investigation by Waikato Regional Council for poor effluent management, including discharge to land and onto streams of the Kaimai-Mamaku Range.

The fine will be the largest imposed under the Resource Management Act in its 34-year history, following government changes this year that saw penalties for non-compliance ramp up and a history of non-compliance considered in future consenting.

Council regional compliance manager Patrick Lynch said it was one of the worst cases it had dealt with, with regard to the extreme environmental impact and repeated failures to comply.

“This offending has been appalling,” Lynch said.

“What I think happened in this situation is that [the company] got overwhelmed through lack of maintenance, lack of investment in infrastructure and intensification of the business.

“And then they’re really in a difficult place, which they placed themselves in, and it’s so hard to recover from that.”

Lynch said serious offending could have severe impacts on the Waihou River, soil health and marine life.

He said the record fine imposed by Judge Melinda Dickey was a “significant outcome”, and he hoped it would encourage better compliance on the farm and encourage other farming companies to take environmental management seriously.

“It’s a real deterrent for this company, but should be a deterrence for others as well.

“We’re really just imploring companies dealing with volumes of waste is just to have good infrastructure, have the infrastructure before you intensify, make sure it’s maintained, keep this stuff front of mind because this is the situation you can end up in.”

Lynch said he hoped the outcome would be meaningful for the community that had been patient through the process.

An enforcement order was imposed on the company to prohibit any future unlawful discharges, as the farm could continue to operate, and will face continued monitoring.

In a statement, a Rawhiti Environmental Park spokesperson said they were sorry the effluent issues occurred and accepted the court’s decision.

The statement said the issues began after the departure of a lease-holder who left the effluent system and infrastructure in poor condition and when Rawhiti resumed control and discovered the system was severely compromised, they moved quickly to put a long-term solution in place.

Rawhiti made the decision to keep the farm operating and invested more than $1 million in a state-of-the-art effluent system.

The spokesperson said Cyclone Gabrielle and the record rainfall through much of 2023 significantly delayed earthworks, which meant the new system could not be commissioned until December 2023.

They said the new system is now performing to a high standard and they are continuing to lift environmental performance including the planting of more than 2000 native plants along waterways to enhance biodiversity and protect water quality.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Along the short path to Kelmarna community farm visitors are transported from suburbia to a rural oasis.

The 4 and a half acre block of land is nestled between the affluent Auckland suburbs of Ponsonby and Herne Bay, the last place you’d expect to find a farm.

The section is full of fruit trees, flower gardens, vegetables plots, and animals. As Adrian Roche shows First Up around chickens crowd around the gate of their coop hoping to be fed. Bees swarm around their hives in the spring sun.

“We really love having the bees here to help make all that pollination happen, and we love having the honey to sell” says Roche.

There’s even room for a few sheep. The breed, Wiltshires, were chosen because they’re sell shedding. That means they don’t have to be shorn or docked.

Kelmarna is completely organic, and produce, including fruit, vegetables and eggs are sold at the farm shop.

But plants aren’t the only thing being nurtured. The farm has a therapeutic gardening programme for people with mental health needs or intellectual disablities and participants in the programme can cultivate their own small plot of land.

“Some people need support and advice, and some people like the woman that looks after this plot neeeds absolutely no advice because she’s an amazing gardener” says Roche, pointing to one plot that is bursting with spring growth.

The farm’s compost is made on site, referred to as the ‘Soil Factory’.

To cut down on emissions an e-bike is used to collect food scraps from local restaurants and households. they scraps are then composted at Kelmarna and either used on the farm’s garden beds or sold.

Kelmarna’s history is almost as rich as the soil. The land was part of 3000acres Ngati Whatua gifted to the crown in 1840. In the 20th century it was part of St Vincent’s home of compassion.

“In modern speak you might call it an adoption processing centre” Roche says. “So this was common throughout New Zealand where women would be pregnant, out of wedlock, their families would generally organise them to go to places like the Home of Compassion here and have their babies and then the babies would be adopted out”

Some fruit trees from that era remain, while the shed where nuns once milked cows is now the lunch room for volunteers and workers.

The farm started in 1981 when Paul Lagerstedt lead the land from the council.

Adrian Roche began volunteering at Kelmarna in the 90s before becoming an employee in 2003.

“I’ve studied sustainability a lot and they always talk about, the importance of social goals and environmental goals” he says. That’s why I love this project so much, because it’s, doing both things. It’s got really strong social goals of supporting people, supporting the most vulnerable, and then communities, community space, and then also environmental goals about how to produce food that kind of improves the world rather than detracts from the world.

With Jo-Anne Hazel, Roche has written ‘Growing Together’ the story of the first 40 years of Kelmarna Farm.

While researching the book, old gardening diaries were uncovered, detailing early attempts at improving growing conditions. Using fish for fertiliser didn’t turn out so well after the nuns complained.

“They had to put the kibosh on that because the smell was sort of wafting over the neighbourhood and attracting a lot of flies, I suspect”

Fish wasn’t the only animal fertiliser tried.

“One of the most bizarre things was they were taking ashes from cremated animals from the zoo and using it. Very high in potassium maybe, I’m not sure, but it’s recorded there in the diaries”

More recent history hasn’t been without controversy, including 2019’s ‘cowgate’ episode.

“We had a bit of a moment in the glare of the media about selling some of our cattle for meat and then people complaining that the cattle were being turned into meat” Roche says.

The three steers were eventually rehomed, while Kelmarna escaped it’s own brush with death last year.

Community fundraising saved the farm, and a new 20 year lease was signed with Auckland council in April ensuring Kelmarna will continue thriving and growing into the future.

Kelmarna Farm will be hosting a series of ‘Growing Together’ Farm tours on December 5th and 6th led by co-author Adrian Roche.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand