Scheme's backers offer new options

Alternatives to a controversial cow-cubicle proposal have been released by the backers of the Mackenzie Basin farming scheme.

A panel of resource-consent commissioners is being asked to consider whether the new options, which may still include some cubicle farming, are more acceptable than the original option for stables containing cow cubicles alone.

The cubicle dairy-farming plan – proposed by Southdown Holdings, Five Rivers and Williamson Holdings – is for 16 new developments managing nearly 18,000 cows housed in cubicle stables. Cows would be confined to cubicle stables for 24 hours a day for eight months, from March to October, and let outside for 12 hours a day from November to February.

The Green Party expressed outrage at the idea and the effluent damage to the Mackenzie Basin, with co-leader Russel Norman calling it "industrial dairy farming, pure and simple".

The Environmental Defence Society has filed proceedings in the Timaru High Court asking that the land-use consents – granted by the Waitaki District Council – be overturned.

In Christchurch on Tuesday, Ryder Consulting senior environmental scientist Melissa Robson presented revised environmental-management plans for Southdown's Glen Eyrie and WHL Killermont stations, and Five Rivers' Ohau Downs station.

Commissioner Jim Cooke said it was good to have the options.

"In the case of Glen Eyrie, we have five scenarios put to us. What are we supposed to do with them?"

Panel chairman Paul Rogers said commissioners would consider the alternatives.

It might be, he said, that commissioners thought some of the new options had merit but the original one did not.

Robson told the hearing that solid effluent would be spread on land by a calibrated muck spreader.

That would occur throughout the year unless the ground was saturated or frozen.

A herd of about 1000 housed for seven months of the year would produce about 500 cubic metres of solid effluent after 50 per cent was removed by separation.

Liquid effluent would be piped from each dairy farm to centre-pivot irrigators, where it would be mixed with irrigation water and sprayed onto land.

Tankers would apply liquid effluent to paddocks that had streams running through irrigation circles, she said.

Actor Sam Neill, artist Grahame Sydney and poet Brian Turner have joined forces in opposition group Mackenzie Guardians to fight the plan.

- © Fairfax NZ News