Editorial: That's a lot of effluent

OPINION: A move to set up intensive dairying using 18,000 cows in the Mackenzie Basin brought an initial wave of opposition from people who found the idea of housing the animals in sheds for eight months a year repugnant, both in terms of the cows' welfare and the threat to New Zealand's image as a country where farm animals graze lush pasture.

But a bigger blow to the idea's proponents has come from Environment Minister Nick Smith, who said this week that the effluent from that many cows is equivalent in volume to what a city of 250,000 people would produce.

That's a lot to dispose of.

Dr Smith has taken the unusual step of "calling in" the resource consent applications so that they will be handled by a board of inquiry.

It's a move that both acknowledges the importance of the applications and highlights the inadequacy of local authorities to deal withsome projects of national significance.

The board will bring a more acceptable level of scrutiny to the proposal in this case.

It is hard to see it finding sufficient merit in the plan for it to go ahead but if it does, it is likely to impose such a long list of conditions that the backers won't want to proceed.

Whatever the board decides, it will do so independently of the minister's views  but his intervention sends a clear signal that there is much more to consider than satisfying the urge to make the most of dairying's potential.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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