News release

17 March 2011

Dairy compliance improves in Wellington region

Greater Wellington says a rise in dairy compliance in the region is a positive reflection of work between the regional council, dairy farming organisations and the region’s dairy farmers.

Clean Stream Accord results released today show that for the Wellington region full compliance with the Resource Management Act and regional regulations is now 90%* compared with just 53% in 2007/08.

Over the same period non-compliance has fallen from 19% to 9% and significant non-compliance dropped from 28% to only one percent.

The rise in compliance comes after Greater Wellington instituted annual compliance visits for dairy farms in 2008. It follows a similar rise last year Greater Wellington has also supported Dairy NZ in running on-farm seminars to improve practices around dairy effluent management.

“We believe those initiatives have made a difference, and our region’s dairy farmers deserve recognition for their efforts,” Greater Wellington Environmental Regulation Manager Alistair Cross said.

*Note that the 90% figure above differs from the 89% figure stated in the Clean Streams report (released earlier today), due to a rounding error on our part. The precise figures from Greater Wellington’s 2009/2010 compliance monitoring visits are 89.8% full compliance, 9% non-compliance and 1.3% significant non-compliance.

ENDS

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