Steady improvements in environmental compliance during 2023-24

Continued progress across many rural and industrial consent-holders and the building of stronger relationships are features of the 2023-24 Compliance Monitoring Report.

The report gives an overview of Environment Southland’s compliance, monitoring and enforcement activities. It was approved at today’s full council meeting.

All industries within Southland require a range of resource consents to discharge to air, water, coast and land. These discharges are monitored to ensure compliance with consents and to minimise impacts on the environment.

Chairman Nicol Horrell said the resource management team had been producing the report annually for more than two decades, and in that time, there had been a lot of change.

“What hasn’t changed is our commitment to ensuring strong environmental outcomes, and working with our community to educate and advise on how to minimise the impact activities might have on Southland’s environment.

“It’s also a useful tool for individuals, businesses and councils to compare and assess their own performance or develop plans.”

Results from the team’s industry inspections also showed positive gains, with many continuing to make system improvements and work closely with the team when things did not quite go to plan, he said.

“These sorts of relationships are vital for ensuring we can achieve the improvements to our environment we all want,” Chairman Horrell said.

During the 2023-24 year, the resource management team issued 40 infringement notices, compared to 33 the previous year. There were 30 abatement notices issued during the year compared to 60 in 2022-23.

While there had been a pleasing upward tick in compliance among many industrial consent-holders, some needed to continue to work hard to guard against significant non-compliance.

These consents often had a degree of complexity and reflected the specific, often unique processes, that occurred at each site, but the onus was on holders to meet the conditions of consents, Chairman Horrell said.

The team expanded its education-first approach, implementing a new notification system to give farmers a 24-hour notice of dairy discharge consent inspections, leading to positive on-farm conversations.

During the year, the team conducted 783 dairy discharge consent inspections, 66% were graded as fully compliant, 25% low risk non-compliance, 8% moderate non-compliance and 1% significant non-compliance. While there were less inspections this year, it was pleasing to note that significant non-compliance is at its lowest level, down from 3% in the 2022-23 year, he said.

The full report can be found here: https://www.es.govt.nz/environment/compliance/compliance-monitoring-reports