The Choose Clean Water group released the seven-point rescue plan that included canning irrigation subsidies, funding a transition out of intensive pastoral systems and reducing cow numbers nationally as three of its points.
The plan also called for polluter-pays taxing, improved regional council reporting and adopting Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development recommendations to move to a low-carbon economy.
But Federated Farmers environment spokesman Chris Allen said the plan appeared to be pointing firmly against the farming sector and failed to address pollution issues attributable to the urban sector.
“They appear to be totally fixated on cows and all about being focused on anti-food production.
“There is no mention there of the impact of urban pollution, which is increasingly significant,” Allen said.
He cited the plan’s fourth point, to reduce cow numbers.
“If that is the case, then should they also be looking at including a plan to reduce house numbers and subdivisions?”
The plan had the backing of some heavyweight groups including the Tourism Export Council, Federated Mountain Clubs, Fish and Game and Forest and Bird.
Scientific backing was also coming from endorsement by Massey University freshwater ecologist Dr Russell Death, environmental health academic Dr Alex Macmillan and public health professor at Otago University Professor Michael Baker.
Input also came from ecologist and veterinarian Dr Alison Dewes.
Dewes said the plan incorporated some of her concepts for helping farmers adapt their systems to a lower input, lower nutrient footprint that would ensure sustainable dairy systems into the future.
That included a proposal to invest in an agricultural transition fund.
It would include funding demonstration farms to show methods and promote diversification from intensive pastoral systems to help reduce nutrient losses.
Dewes said the funding could come from the plan’s second point, by withdrawing all public subsidies of irrigation schemes. The Government has $480 million for irrigation funding.
But Dewes said any further progress for the plan would have to come by it gaining political traction with parties.
The plan’s release came hard on the heels of the Labour Party’s plan for freshwater.
The Labour plan aimed to make it more difficult for farms to increase stocking rates and intensify and was founded on principles recommended by a previous head of the Environment Court.
It also included stricter monitoring and enforcement by councils with limits on phosphate and sediment losses, two not included in National’s freshwater plan.
Intensification of land use would not remain a permitted activity and would need resource consent.
But despite the timing and some similarities to the Freshwater Campaign’s plan, it had not earned complete praise from that group.
Choose Clean Water group leader and Massey ag-science student Marnie Prickett said the Labour plan earned some points when compared to the seven-point action plan.
“We applaud the requirement for stricter monitoring and enforcement by regional councils and for including limits on phosphate and sediment in waterways. That is something absent from National’s present freshwater standards which only focus on nitrogen.”
However, more detail was required on what the exact standards were that Labour intended to impose and enforce around key contaminants, including E. coli levels in water.
Prickett denied the Freshwater Rescue Plan was “anti-cow”.
“There is increased consensus that NZ already has too many cows. We know this from OECD reports. Even the Minister for Primary Industries (Nathan Guy) has acknowledged we have enough.
“By also putting sediment limits in the rescue plan means we are also targeting urban development.
“The Government does not have any sediment controls in its freshwater standards and sediment is also an urban issue.”
She said the plan’s polluter-pays action point was also indifferent to urban or rural sourced pollution but would encourage whoever the polluter was to seek more innovative ways to deal with it.
“When we have public health experts like Professor Michael Baker pointing out that rural children are more susceptible to disease than urban kids due to contamination of water supplies, how can you argue this is anti-cow when it aims to protect the people you are supposed to represent?”
Allen said it would be more constructive to take a unified approach to dealing with pollution issues.
“Farmers remain committed to continuing to invest large amounts into water quality but not all water quality issues are attributable to farmers.”
