Environmental Compliance Monitoring Report 2005/06
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Environmental Compliance Monitoring Report 2005/06 Report by - Environment Southland Environmental Compliance Division Environment Southland Publication No 2006/07 Environment Southland is the brand name of the Southland Regional Council Foreword Most people who use natural resources in their businesses are well aware their future relies on protecting the environment. There will only be strong commercial and primary production sectors if we produce goods in a manner consumers are comfortable with. History shows us that, when we wreck the environment, we wreck the economy and the civilisation which depends on it. It is pleasing to note a 13% decrease in the number of complaints made to the Compliance Division this year. Our educational programmes and regular Field Days held by Environment Southland staff, have played a great part in achieving this result. Environment Southland is not responsible for regulating land use directly. Most soils are suitable for receiving dairy effluent, but it is our business to consider the factors of infiltration rates and possible effects on groundwater, non-point and point discharges. The Council sees it as undesirable to regulate directly to achieve particular land use outcomes. We will guide and educate and, ultimately, exercise control over environmental effects that result from the choices farmers make. The burning of industrial, or commercial, waste appears to be an emerging problem within the city limits and abatement notices have been issued. Our Council is also enforcing compliance on urban property owners who have heavy infestations of gorse and broom. Many notices have recently been issued. Finally, our Councillors would like to welcome our Compliance Manager, Mark Hunter, to his new position and take this opportunity to congratulate the staff for continuing to maintain a very high standard of compliance throughout the Southland region. D S Collie E J Tapper Chairman Chairman Environment Southland Environmental Management Committee i ii A word from James Holloway I will not be actually producing the Division’s Compliance Monitoring Report this year. I have, after nine years with the Council, decided to move on. I have left the report with the staff to put together. The development of the Compliance Monitoring Report has been a significant component of the Division’s reporting procedures. It arose from a perceived need to inform the Council of the Division’s activities. It was rapidly recognised that the report also presented substantial opportunities to inform the public of what we do. In fact, feedback from outside the organisation exceeds internal feedback. I have, however, been disappointed at the lack of uptake by the media, considering the wide range of information and issues presented. We have tried, and I hope succeeded, to get away from the mechanistic reporting of the “X inspections required, X inspections undertaken” format. Rather, we have tried to present material which is topical, informative and interesting. Unusual occurrences and interesting points have been presented, along with the more mundane long term data. While much of the data is also fed into the wider monitoring programmes run by Environment Southland, we have not substantially presented the wider context of the data, as this correctly fits into the Environmental Information Division’s State of the Environment monitoring and report-card format reporting. I was surprised to find that a number of organisations have used the Compliance Monitoring Report as one of their performance measures. In my new position I will be on the other side of the fence, as one of the organisations being reported, and so will keep some contact with the ongoing development of the division and their reporting. I wish my successor well, and trust that the consent holders and the public will continue to ask those questions that have kept me engaged over the past nine years. JDR (James) Holloway iii Contents FOREWORD I A WORD FROM JAMES HOLLOWAY III CONTENTS IV FIGURES VII TABLES IX 1.0 PIGGERIES 1 2.0 DAIRY MONITORING 2 2.1 Effluent Discharges 2 2.2 On-farm Assistance 3 2.3 Surface Water Monitoring 3 2.4 Surface Water Sampling 8 2.5 Groundwater Monitoring 8 3.0 WHITEBAIT STRUCTURES 11 4.0 TRUCK WASHES 13 5.0 COASTAL MARINE AREA 14 5.1 Fiordland Structures 14 5.2 Marine Farms 14 5.3 Commercial Surface Water Operations 15 6.0 MAJOR INDUSTRIES 17 6.1 New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Limited 17 6.2 Fonterra Edendale 20 6.3 Alliance Group – Mataura Plant 23 6.4 Alliance Group - Lorneville Plant 25 iv 6.5 Alliance Group - Makarewa Plant 28 6.6 Ballance Agri-Nutrients 30 6.7 Prime Range Meats 32 6.8 Dongwha Patinna NZ Limited 35 7.0 MISCELLANEOUS COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS 38 7.1 Slink Skins Limited 38 7.2 Mossburn Enterprises Limited 39 7.3 Pioneer Generation 41 8.0 MINING 42 9.0 SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANTS 44 9.1 Invercargill City Council, Invercargill Sewage Treatment Plant 44 9.2 Southland District Council – 47 Browns Sewage Treatment 47 9.3 Southland District Council – 48 Manapouri Sewage Treatment 48 10.0 OHAI-NIGHTCAPS WATER SUPPLY 50 11.0 LANDFILLS 52 11.1 Landfill Sites – Annual Report 2006 52 11.2 AB Lime Landfill 53 12.0 INCIDENTS 54 12.1 Monitoring 54 12.2 Self Reporting 54 12.3 Complaints 55 12.4 Major Complaints 55 12.5 Aerial Monitoring 60 13.0 INFRINGEMENT NOTICES 62 v 14.0 ABATEMENT NOTICES 66 15.0 PROSECUTIONS 74 GLOSSARY 76 vi Figures Figure 1 – Piglets at one of Southland’s piggeries............................................1 Figure 2 – The results of Dairy Inspections for the 2005/06 Season ...........2 Figure 3 – Rating of required water sampling which compares Council collected against consent holder collected......................................4 Figure 4 – Example of an unsatisfactory sample, where effluent was entering a waterway via a tile in October 2005 ..............................5 Figure 5 – Ratings of all collected samples 2005/06 season expressed as percentage and excluding months where number of samples collected was small. ............................................................................5 Figure 6 – Example of an unsatisfactory sample result where effluent entered a tile and discharged to an open waterway September 2005..................................................................................6 Figure 7 – Differences in E coli values ..............................................................6 Figure 8 – Differences between NH4 results....................................................7 Figure 9 – Percentage of consent holders collecting own samples................8 Figure 10 – Percentage of all groundwater samples which exceeded NZDWS 2005 standards of 11.3 mg/L nitrate each season........9 Figure 11 – Location of groundwater samples which exceeded NZDWS 2005 standards of 11.3 mg/L during the 2005/06 season...........9 Figure 12 – Percentage of all groundwater samples with a presence of E coli bacteria ...................................................................................10 Figure 13 – Non-compliance identified during routine inspection of whitebait stands................................................................................11 Figure 14 – An example of unconsented bank work .......................................12 Figure 15 –- The consent for this site comes up for renewal in 2007 ............13 Figure 16 – A structure in Blanket Bay ..............................................................14 Figure 17 – Level of particulate mater deposited at two sites in the Edendale area (both results have been corrected for background deposition).........................................................................................22 Figure 18 – BOD5 concentrations and BOD loading of the effluent with respect to the consent conditions. .................................................24 Figure 19 – Total suspended solids and biochemical oxygen demand concentrations in the effluent discharge with respect to the consistently maintain consent limits..............................................26 Figure 20 – Ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations in the effluent...............................................................................................26 Figure 21 – Dissolved oxygen concentrations in the Makarewa River up and downstream of the effluent discharge...........................................27 Figure 22 – Total suspended solids loading in the effluent with respect to the consent conditions.....................................................................29 Figure 23 – Total suspended solids loading in the effluent with respect to the consent conditions.....................................................................29 Figure 24 – Total suspended solids concentration in the discharge at the river.....................................................................................................31 Figure 25 – Dissolved reactive phosphorus and fluoride concentration in the discharge at the river........................................................................31 Figure 26 – Total suspended solids concentration in the Prime Range Meats effluent...............................................................................................33 vii Figure 27 – Ammonia nitrogen concentration in the Waikiwi Stream upstream and downstream of the Prime Range Meats discharge................................................................................33 Figure 28 – Dissolved reactive phosphorus concentration in the Waikiwi Stream upstream