Dairy industry environmental compliance remained high during the 2020-21 monitoring year, according to Environment Southland (ES).

Despite significant disruption due to COVID-19 restrictions, there had been 960 on-site and aerial dairy shed effluent discharge consent inspections completed during the 2020/21 season.  

Of these, 747 were fully compliant, 200 were graded low risk or moderate non-compliance, while 13 were graded significant non-compliance, ES general manager integrated catchment management Paul Hulse said.

This equates to approximately 1.3% significant non-compliant inspections.

“When a farm is graded as significantly non-compliant there is a range of follow-up actions available. Not all of these actions result in enforcement. Other actions can include re-inspection, diversion, letters of direction and warnings, infringement notices or abatement notices,” Hulse said.

The 2020-21 year saw a slight drop in the number of incidents reported to the compliance division on the previous year.

There were 888 reported incidents in 2020/2021 compared to 964 reported incidents in the 2019/2020 year.

Regulatory Committee chairman Neville Cook said it was pleasing to see the dairy industry with low significant non-compliance, but that the compliance monitoring report also reported on compliance relating to commercial enterprises.

“We monitor various industries and as we look ahead to the changes signalled by central government and new regulations, it will be important to ensure they keep focused on improving performance. Looking at the region more widely, the truth is we all have a part to play in improving environmental performance,” Cook said.