Hello again. Abit late sorry to say, missed last weeks dead line. I have been through abit of a trial and tribulation trying to get a water pump to suck. Not wanting to spend the dosh and get a expert in, I just had to find out for my self . I have 2 pumps that are supposed to pump to a head of (height) 38 meters. Both will, but one being a single impeller pump means it takes a week. The other does the job in about 8 hrs. It was this pump that I moved to a new sight but used a new coupling . I got one load through but then no go. Well what a mission . Took the pump to town got it checked. Pumping great. Came home took a hammer to the non return valve. No probs there, even though it now has a couple of new marks. So bought proper suction hose thinking that the heavy black 42mm alkathene might not be sealing at the coupling properly. Still no suck. Finally it dawned on me that the new coupling between the flexible suction hose and the alkthene was buggered. Yep one load and it sucked air instead. Solution. I made up a platform out of wood and placed the pump in the middle of the river and used the 1 meter length of flexi hose at the pump to suck through. All that expence. I was really pee-d off .
Over the weekend we had the annual Kaitieke Dog trials. I help liberate the sheep on one of the course’s. It is a weekend of hot days, yarns full of bull crap, laugh’s and plenty of beer. The trials enjoyed record entries this yr. Plenty of thoughts of the old days when competitors vehicles lined the car park and there were plenty of local speculators and the bar ran til the wee hours both nights. No such luck now. But on the positive front most trialists travel with fellow trialists , all bringing more than one dog , so while the parking and the bar is empty, the entries are flowing in.
This last month or 2 I have been the organiser /chair of a group put together to raise awareness of the need for adequate sec 32’s as per the Resource Management Act.(RMA) This is a economic cost verse environmental benefit including alternatives.The One Plan is whoefully inadequate in fullfulling this legal requirement. The chair and staff openly admit it but have no intention of addressing this in a meaning full manner. Even the MPI (ministry primary industries ) are scathing of the effort so far. Success has been limited, with one individal representing a farmer group stating after the second meeting that they enjoyed a good relationship with Horizons and did not want to rock the boat. That person admitted that they had not read the plans and did not really understand. But the positive outcome is that they were better informned nad would not make a dick of themselves when they raise the issue with Horizons . Fortunately they grasped the importance of the need to know just what the economic cost to their members may or may not be and promised to persue the matter. Here’s hopeing. I have got to say that sometimes it is obvious that certain people have one nostril in the trough and would love to get the other in as well.
I went along to the meeting organised by Horizons 2 weeks ago to explain the One Plan’s to us cocky’s. Held at the District Council offices. It was not publically advertised and I only found out quite by chance earlier ,then the Feds sent around a email to their members. About 25 farmers attended. Most farmers sat there and said nothing. Horizons staff spoke really sweetly. All is great. Just ring us to be sure before doing any thing. No probs with the resource consent etc. I stood up and asked a question again about the sec 32, especially as chapter 5 of the plans speaks of further measures being required if the environmental out comes sought are not achieved. In this instance it was the Sustainable Land Use Inititative being farm plans that i was reffering to. It talks of altering farm management practices and stocking rate restrictions. Well One staff member being Mr Kirk lost his rag. The upshot of that was the chair ,being our Regional rep threatened to chuck me out. After he and staff settled down I managed to ask more questions to do with schedual E and the top 100 wetlands and top 200 bush remenments. It appears that the top 100/ 200 guys get significant regional funding to protect whilist the rest of us caught by schedual E get nothing.
The other question directed at the District Council being that our District Plan allows all farming activities as of right and permitted status. Chapter 10 of the One Plan states that the District Council is the lead agency for Natural Hazards which is sediment amonst other as per sec 62 of the RMA.
The CEO answered but did not answer instead choose to try and make a dick of me. In fact he lied.
Getting back to the sec 62 RMA bit. This was a appeal point in Property Rights in New Zealands appeal to the High Court 2 years ago, and to which the Judge Ko’s ignored in his judgement. Lands of Regional Significance. Regional Council cannot make rules for. Including bio-diversity. Well well. Now Horizons are saying PRINZ was right. I toddled off to see Minister Mckelvie our Parliamentry rep and put it to him. He coughed and spluttered and tried to make out he knew more than me about the law than me promising to get back to me. I said that when he figured out I was right ,I expected him to tell Horizons to pee off and tell the District Council to show some spine. What I am getting out of it is that the District Council is tied by the unlawful Well-beings they confirmned in the past. More on this in the future. But thoes of you you have been long term readers will have read of my appeal to the Environment Court in 2012 of the District Council’s well-being’s. My guess is that they are quiet happy to allow Regional Council to regulate activities on land so long as they do not regulate us out of bussiness. “Yet”
My take on the above meeting is that it was designed to make farmers feel all warm and fuzzy, trust us stuff ,but Horizons did not answer any questions!!!!!
Whilist we are on Land use and particularly land use change (Ruapehu has 35% of it’s farmed land both sheep and beef in the LUC 7 & 8 identified in the One Plan for land use change) I read a article in the Farmers Weekly dated March the 10th pg 29. Merits of Manuka. A gold mine for farmers. I was talking to industry participants a while ago. Seems you have to go into this with your eyes open. To get the top notch stuff, young vigourishly growing manuka is the best. Thus you have to rotate the manuka blocks. as the more mature is not the best by along way. Thus it seems you have a block sprayed out. a block starting the regeneration process and a block producing. The big question is will Regional Council give a resource consent for the above, after all the aim is water quality outcomes. The other consideration is that Manuka is the first step to forest. So if forest is the desired outcome long term, beware.
In the same on pg 33 . No consistency in pollution penalties. Bold letters. Usually the finger is pointed at dairy as to why a certain river or lake is not what it once was in terms of water quality. But this summer was notible for the pollution stories where farmers was not the cause. Urban Sewage. A perenial issue. And always will be. Looking up the schedual of such pollution hot spots in the Environment committee agenda a while ago there it was. Urban sewage and rubbish dumps. Not that of course our urban cousins are to aware. They are more concerned abought where the money is coming from to pay the next rate bill. Given that arrears prob is an increasing one, do not expect much to change. This water quality thing is out of hand. I know that we have to be careful, but having sat through a handful of conferences and a debate with Horizons chair and heard the yarn about how we are going to be a real rich nation in terms of returns from agriculture when we can prove we are truley clean and green. Something about a black flag brand. Where are the markets going to come from. Which nations. Where is the bussiness plan?
Given that by international standards NZ agriculture is pretty good, one has suspect that local govt has been captured by political and environmental extremists for outcomes that are not in the best interests of NZ. In that vein, same mag pg 34 Skewed priorities ignor agriculture. Alan Emmerson is taking the stick to that activist Dr Mike Joy, Massey University. And quite rightly .A must read. Dairy pay out brings in another $500 million to the nation. Joy say,s dairy expansion bad and wants Federated Farmers to lobby Govt to stop it. The Feds incidently are doing their best to do just that so do not laugh. But the biggy is that Dr Joy more than likely lives in Palmerston North which is the greatest pollutor of the Manawatu river. I think he needs to redirect his energy, but then he would have to pay more rates and make him really unpopulor with many urbanites.
Here we have it in the Farmers Weekly March the 31.pg 20. Fish and Game should abandon adversarial approach. Letter to the editor by James Bourke. He makes the point that fish and game are setting them selves up as gaurdians of the environment in one hand and then protecting a species introduced that is 24/7 hogging it,s way through our aquatic bio-d. He complains of a recent trip to the north branch of the Hurunui River where intensive farming does not feature only to find that he could not fish as the amount of periphyton present was too grt. He also makes the point that this is ironic as the Hurunui is subject to the Regional Plan limiting nutrients attributed to farming to decrease nuisance algae. He states that it is time Fish and Game stopped putting its self on a pedistal, and stopped funding skewed surveys. He says alot more ,this is a good read. Most probably most fish and game members live in town to. Now that would be a good survey to conduct.
Whilist we are on the subject of Ecan. I read in the Straight Furrow 1 April. pg 3. Ecan Boss Dame Margret Bazley. We can work it out. She is reffering to Ecan,s controversial recently notified Canterbury Land Plan. Espeacially the N limits. Just as I said in a recent previous post on the Irrigation proposals for Canterbury being stymied by N limits. There it is. Somebody down there must read my blogg. The artical describes Dame Bazley as single minded. I have commented on Dame Bazley in a previous post on another matter. She is a important person in NZ politics. Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t she tied up with the Auditor Generals office.
So readers. Something has to give. The enviromentalists or the economy. We can meet in the middle via the NPSFW targets , but unfortunately the trendy lefty’s want it all their way. If they get their way we will never see our urban cousins in a financial position to fix their water quality issues ,indeed we will all be alot poorer.
Bye for now