Farming spokesman breaches consents

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He has publicly rejected the "nasty farmer" stereotype – but Federated Farmers spokesman John Barrow has also breached resource consents on multiple occasions at his own farm.

The organisation's Tararua president has issued public statements about the dairy industry working on solutions to overcome the contamination of the Manawau River, and is standing for a position on Horizons Regional Council.

Council documents show Mr Barrow has breached his resource consents on his farm five times since 2008.

Mr Barrow defended his farming practices and said councils were "over-reacting a little" on non-compliance notices, as farmers had improved levels in recent years.

The breaches related to taking too much water from a stream and not complying with the conditions over discharging waste on to land.

He said he had applied to Horizons for a resource consent 10 years ago to take water from a small stream on his farm, but it got the name of the stream wrong – a mistake he was particularly angry about.

The council did not realise until nine years later when it determined he was not complying with conditions – mistakes he said cost him $100,000 to remedy through actions including relocating equipment.

A spokeswoman for Horizons Regional Council was not able to verify whether the breaches were due to council error yesterday.

Mr Barrow said he had now applied for a new consent, and was paying up to another $20,000 to the council as a result.

Another breach related to him miscalculating the water take from one pump, and another happened at a time when he was spending Christmas and New Year holidays with family in Australia.

Mr Barrow was also found to have breached a land discharge consent by increasing his stock numbers, but he said a lot of farmers had been "caught out" this way when their stock numbers increased – even though effluent ponds were not overflowing as a result. "The reality is it makes no difference unless it overflows."

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said the breaches showed Mr Barrow had been caught taking water he should not have taken, which decreased river levels and had a detrimental effect on ecosystems and water health.

Mr Barrow could not accuse the public of being too critical of farmers when he was one of those farmers having a detrimental effect on the environment, Dr Norman said.

"From the point of view of the environment, there are serious breaches and they are repeated."

Dr Norman said that, in light of the breaches, he questioned Mr Barrow's position to make statements about farmers' commitment to cleaning up the Manawatu River.

However, Mr Barrow stood by his role and said the group had come up with a "far superior document" in its People's Accord plan to clean up the river, compared with the Manawatu River Accord, which it did not sign.

Gordon McKellar, Federated Farmers Manawatu-Rangitikei president, said non-compliance with resource consent conditions was often technical and due to administrative errors.

- © Fairfax NZ News