Improved performance reaps rewards

Routine flights for aerial monitoring of farm dairy effluent discharge consents will not be carried out during 2016/17.

At yesterday's Regulatory Committee meeting, Environment Southland councillors agreed that ceasing the flights for the coming season was a positive move given the reduction in significant non-compliance over recent years.

Policy, planning & regulatory services director Vin Smith said the compliance team initiated a review after considering the significant non-compliance numbers, success of aerial monitoring, staffing and changes in plans.

Cases of significant non-compliance have gone down from 6 percent to 1.7 percent over the past three years. It's a reflection of the sector's improving performance.

A report presented at the meeting said that ceasing the aerial monitoring flights would likely result in little change to the overall outcome of the monitoring programme because non-compliance identified on the flights had become very low.