Environment Southland is pleased with the continued strong compliance in the dairy sector, Environment Southland compliance manager Simon Mapp says.
In the 2016-17 Compliance Monitoring Report, 941 dairy shed effluent discharge consent inspections were completed by Environment Southland. Of those, 651 were fully compliant, 249 showed minor or marginal non-compliance, two were non-compliant with cow numbers and 39 were significantly non-compliant.
He said the percentage of non-compliance had increased from 1.7% in 2015-16 to 4.1% in 2016-17.
But when the numbers were analysed, some farms were non-compliant more than three times, which could throw out the numbers, Mr Mapp said.
There were more than 900 consented dairy farms in Southland, so keeping significant non-compliance under 5% was quite an achievement, Mr Mapp said.
''We are very happy with the level of non-compliance as it stands at the moment.''
He said there was an increase in incidents reported, but a reduction in high-priority ones.
Part of the increase could have been because people were becoming aware about the pollution hot line and also Southland's Regional Air Plan 2016, he said.
Along with the dairy sector, compliance checks were also made at industrial facilities.
Blue Sky Meats, which holds four consents for the purpose of meat-processing, of which three consents are to discharge contaminants to the environment, was significantly non-compliant for the third year in a row.
Environment Southland conducted routine consent monitoring at Blue Sky Meats every two months, the report said.
''During these inspections no significant issues were identified with the water quality in the receiving waters. However, on one occasion effluent ponding resulted in non-compliance.''
There was also two reported incidents which resulted in consent non-compliance.
Blue Sky Meats was issued with an enforcement order, under which it has to hire a consultant to work with it to better manage its effluent.
As part of this, a large effluent storage pond was constructed
to help the company manage its effluent disposal.
- Alliance, which holds 12 resource consents at its Lorneville plant, seven at Makarewa and seven at Mataura, was fully compliant at Makarewa, had one incident at Mataura and was not fully compliant at Lorneville.
Three complaints were received at Mataura - one regarding the spreading of solids on to saturated soils and two alleging odours, the report said.
The first incident was confirmed, which resulted in an education letter being sent to Alliance Group Ltd.
At Lorneville, four complaints were received alleging odour, which two were confirmed and two were not, the report said.
''[This] resulted in significant breaches of the air discharge consents.''
An ammonia spill was also reported.
- Prime Range Meats was fully compliant while South Pacific Meats was technically non-compliant with the provision of monitoring data in accordance with its reporting requirements.
- Fonterra, which holds 11 resource consents, had generally good compliance, besides some minor breaches.
- Open Country, which holds two resource consents, was nearly fully compliant except for exceeding the discharge of stormwater on two occasions.
- Ballance Agri-Nutrients and Ravensdown were compliant.