Dirty rivers dead dogs and dairy farmers.

[ynot slow]

Try the council or associated council(regional type),usually if a cockie has spillage they'll be on to it.My dad had a small(1000ltrs colostrum)lol leak from his tanks a year or so ago,the stream went cloudy and he was given a fine for unlawfull discharge,although the council rep did say it was accidental,the tap was ok but pipe had ruptured due to being crashed into by a power company driver,he also managed to put dent in their shed from hiab,and tried to say he didn't do it.

[Hitcher]

When in doubt, ring the environment division of your local regional council. Testing water quality and responding to the concerns of the public is part of what they have a statutory responsibility for. Identifying point sources of pollution can be hard to do for all manner of reasons. But I am sure that your local regional council would be happy to help.

[scracha]

Wot Hitcher said. Don't bother with local council...they're in cahoots with the local farmers. Ring up environmental council (separate entity).

As for testing water...most "rural" supply stores (ones that supply pumps, floats, that sort of gear) can give you a container and send the sample away for you. Doesn't cost much as there are lots of lifestylers who get their (runoff) water tanks tested annually.

I won't let me dog in the local river for a couple of days after heavy rain.

Dairy farmers PLANTING trees? Surely someone is joking. Where possible, dairy farmers rip down hedges and cut down trees to get every last square meter of grass. Obviously this isn't sustainable land management but the current economics of farming rewards destructive farm practises.

[JMemonic]

Dairy farmers PLANTING trees? Surely someone is joking. Where possible, dairy farmers rip down hedges and cut down trees to get every last square meter of grass. Obviously this isn't sustainable land management but the current economics of farming rewards destructive farm practises.

I was wondering about this one, my declining memory recalls being told at secondary school that a lot of the seemingly random planting around Canterbury was actually a scientific method of wind erosion reduction, and to break up the strength of the Norwesters upon the region, I an wondering if we are going to start seeing some of the issues we had in the 70's and early 80's.

[Hitcher]

I an wondering if we are going to start seeing some of the issues we had in the 70's and early 80's.

And what issues are those?

[hayd3n]

Might just take you up on that H,wonder if i could take a few samples and courier them down to you.

ur in oamaru?
my m8 hapens to be in oamaru quite frequently

[shrub]

Dairying has a huge impact on water supplies and is destroying what will one day be an extremely valuable resource, but it's also extremely profitable so it isn't going to change for a long tme.

Sorry mate, clean rivers are like HQ Kingswoods - used to be everywhere, now bloody rare.

[JMemonic]

And what issues are those?

Hmm thought that would have been a little obvious from my post, soil erosion but here goes a larger explanation.

The Nor West wind that blows through Canterbury is extremely dry, it has the ability to suck meters of water content from the soils per hour, leaving the region in cases little more than a dried out dust bowl, when the ground becomes so dry the wind can pick up particles of the top soil and carry this with it, this action has several downsides, it erodes the soils, (and there have been published satellite photos showing the particles travelling out to sea), it increase the of numbers respiratory related incidents in the region, and the kicker is as a motorcyclist the dust reduces visibility, also the wind strengths make riding difficult if not sometime impossible.

[Hitcher]

Hmm thought that would have been a little obvious from my post, soil erosion but here goes a larger explanation.

The Nor West wind that blows through Canterbury is extremely dry, it has the ability to suck meters of water content from the soils per hour, leaving the region in cases little more than a dried out dust bowl, when the ground becomes so dry the wind can pick up particles of the top soil and carry this with it, this action has several downsides, it erodes the soils, (and there have been published satellite photos showing the particles travelling out to sea), it increase the of numbers respiratory related incidents in the region, and the kicker is as a motorcyclist the dust reduces visibility, also the wind strengths make riding difficult if not sometime impossible.

I thought that's what you may have meant. However neither deforestation nor dairying are going to exacerbate that. Indeed both are probably preferable to arable farming, particularly arable farming with practices that involve tillage.

Dairying with extablished pasture and irrigation is probably a good option to mitigate your worst case scenario, provided that irrigation water is applied in a considerate manner.

[puddytat]

Since large scale Dairy moved into my valley all Ive seen them do is:
Cut down any tree in a paddock to make it easier for a Tractor to work
Trees around the periphery dying from root disturbance & excess fertiliser
Fuck the river by running stock in the winter on river flats,imagine 1200 cows up to thier bellies in mud for weeks
Becuse they fence as close as they can to the river, when the river floods & takes out fences in come the diggers & they MOVE the river
We now have warning signs evey summer warning about contaimination & being unsafe to swim
Watch them dump dead cows every spring into gulles & side creeks
Have to far too often smell the toxic stench of smouldering baleage wrap ,household waste, oil & spray containers which can go on for days.
Watch retards that they call workers abuse animals,who dont slow down in thier penile extensions they drive for anyone unless you hold your ground & make the fuckers slow down,who think the own the valley when all of them generally own no more than the vehicle they showed up in & who generally last no more than one season so we get to go thru it all again with the next ones
My thanks goes to the Tasman District Council for being an absolutely useless bunch of wally's who still still let them get away with it
Thanks should also go to Dairy Holdings Ltd who are responsible for this & when you approach the managers they say "its progress, get used to it"
Fuck the lot of ya's & your little empires will crash when the rest of the dodgey financial world collapses....BRING IT ON!!!

[soundbeltfarm]

i dont know what it is like in other parts of the country but we are dairy farming and it is coming into legislation for compulsary riparian planting on all waterways on our property within the next few years .
the council come out 3 yrs ago with an aerial map of all our waterways and they had a scheme to help entice farmers to plant early in the piece where plants and planting was subsidised.
that has ceased now and soon it will be mandatory too have it all done to the required distance from the rivers edge.
we have numerous water checks in the 2 rivers that flow through this property which the council perform during the year . we dont know when they test and we we also have during our routine or un routine dairy inspections to provide an up to date nutrient budget which i think is a crock of shit for the inspector cause it is a thirty page document that when i pushed them about it they dont understand it.
we get a random check during the year on our effluent systems and the management of it and we also now get the same check from the dairy assessor.
i think that dairy has had boom and authority and maybe technology at the time was to slow in keeping up with it in the 90s.
as for effluent spraying we are not allowed to apply effluent with 30m of our boundary and that includes rivers , roads, etc.
i think some of the problem is with high stocking rates. what used to be about 2.2 cows to the hectare is now over 5 to the hectare in intensive farm. so you get more ground compaction which may lead to some of the run off.
we are 3.5 and we are not intensive at all .
We dont put alot of urea on the farm ( roughly 120 units of N per Ha ) but i know of a shit load of farms that put on a heck of alot but also farms that use bugger all.
It probably does not really explain much about our systems here as i am not good at writing into words what i am trying to say.
but thats a brief overview of nutrient stuff on this farm.
and the council here is fast and harsh on farmers breaking the rules .

[JMemonic]

I thought that's what you may have meant. However neither deforestation nor dairying are going to exacerbate that. Indeed both are probably preferable to arable farming, particularly arable farming with practices that involve tillage.

Dairying with extablished pasture and irrigation is probably a good option to mitigate your worst case scenario, provided that irrigation water is applied in a considerate manner.

Ah there is a couple of problems there, one being the usage of water and the stupid structure of the consents, or I understand that is why dairy farmers must irrigate when it is hosing with rain, now my admittedly limited understanding of the aquifers and their replenishment makes seem a stupid idea, as does the irrigation of the roads but thats another story.

Deforestation is overstating it a bit, here is how my memory goes, way back when the government was lead by a bloke called Robert Muldoon there was an outfit called the DSIR, (we wont go into what happened to that organisation), who invested millions in a study to mitigate some of the issues around the Nor Wester, these cover a range including but not limited to erosion the solution was a structured and scientifically developed arrangement of windbreaks, poplar trees were used in a seemingly random fashion, these did not of course did not lower the amount of air moved but somehow affected the velocity that air travelled at, this in turn lowered the erosion that occurred even on grazing pasture, remember this was a time when the land was umm infested with sheep, (not the sort the general public seem to be nowadays but the woolly things we used to make all or major export money off).

To my way of thinking this removal of these belts must be going to have a kick on effect, you know the thing when you are riding with a strong cross wind and you either break shelter or become sheltered from that wind and the effect it has on your bike, well at times of the year state highway one was like that all across the plains, I recall getting blown into the centre of the road often whilst out one the deadly treadly due to the gusts, I also recall (as I was too young to drive) seeing cars getting blown around, with the occasional truck getting into nasty situations.

Surely the removal is going to open up these issues again.

[scissorhands]

Is intensive dairying a microcosm of business in general? Where profit is the god and just like Easter Island the clock is ticking on them?

[oneofsix]

Don't know that Dairying is the sole problem. Waikanae River has recently been 'closed' to dogs a swimmers from SH1 to Jim Cooke Memorial Park (for anyone that wants to google map it) due to blue-green algae which kills the dogs. Doesn't seem to be much room for intensive dairying upstream. Pine tree plantations and hobby farms mainly.

[sinfull]

Don't know that Dairying is the sole problem. Waikanae River has recently been 'closed' to dogs a swimmers from SH1 to Jim Cooke Memorial Park (for anyone that wants to google map it) due to blue-green algae which kills the dogs. Doesn't seem to be much room for intensive dairying upstream. Pine tree plantations and hobby farms mainly.

+1 on that, just saw the artical and the rock snot is washin off the rocks and ending up on the banks of the river down stream !
Shame, but will be keeping my hound away from her favorite playground from here on !