'Paradise lost for luxury steak': Community wants a say on 2200-cow feedlot
Thursday, 16 June 2022
A Canterbury community wants the chance to have their say on a proposed 2200-cattle feedlot operation, near one of the country’s most vulnerable and polluted lakes.
Residents near the proposed Banks Peninsula farm presented two petitions with more than 3000 signatures to Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillors on Thursday, calling for resource consent applications to be publicly notified.
The Christchurch City Council last year granted Wongan Hills consent to build two 200-metre-long indoor composting barns – or feedlots – which could each hold 1000 steers, on its Kaituna Valley farm.
The company has since applied to change that consent to have four smaller barns, letting it house up to 2200 beef cattle for the high-end wagyu export market.
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It has also lodged two resource consent applications with ECan, seeking permission to use the land for feedlots, and to discharge airborne contaminants – in this case, the risk of unpleasant smells.
ECan has yet to decide whether to publicly notify the applications, which would allow any member of the public to make a submission on it.
Annelies Pekelharing, of the Little River Eco-Collective, said locals had four main concerns: increased greenhouse gas emissions, leaching and flooding events washing more nitrates into an already-polluted Lake Ellesmere, animal welfare, and the impact of industrial farming on their “beautiful valley”.
Kaituna Valley is uphill from Lake Ellesmere – or Te Waihora – considered one of the most important wetland habitats in New Zealand.
It has the highest number of bird species recorded anywhere in New Zealand at 203, but its water quality is very poor, according to Land Air Water Aotearoa.
Pekelharing said the lake was already badly degraded by nitrate pollution, and this was not going to help.
The valley was also a flood-prone area, she said.
Locals expected the odour from the farm to be “really bad”, she said, with a similar amount of compost being turned daily as at Bromley’s infamous organics plant.
It would also mean a spike in cow numbers and trucks moving through the valley.
Pekelharing said it was a large-scale, industrial farming operation, the likes of which the area had never seen.
“Banks Peninsula is an area where we’ve been able to have regenerative farming, nothing like this.
“It’s a place where nature has a chance… How totally inappropriate to build a huge industrial feedlot in a Banks Peninsula valley.”
Environmental concerns considered – company
In its applications, Wongan Hills wrote the cattle would spend 24 hours a day inside the barns, but would have unlimited access to food and water.
No liquid effluent would be created, and no leaching from the barns into the groundwater system was expected.
While the cattle would create an estimated 62 litres of wastewater each day, it would all evaporate due to the heat of the composting, the company said.
The compost would be tilled each day, and would be removed and spread over farmland every one or two years.
The operation would comply with nitrogen loss limits set by the regional plan, it said, and it would avoid spreading compost during rain, or within 20m of waterways.
Aotearoa already at ‘peak cow
Local MPs Tracey McLellan and Eugenie Sage were among the crowd of petitioners – including one carrying a sign saying “paradise lost for luxury steak” – on Thursday.
McLellan said she could see no reason why “something of this magnitude can’t go out for public consultation”.
Sage said composting barns were untested technology, and, unlike dairy feedlots where cows usually had at least six hours of access to pasture each day, these cattle would be indoors “24 hours a day, 7 days a week”.
“This will be used to intensify farming… We are at peak cow in Aotearoa.”
While the operation would not produce any liquid effluent, the cattle's nitrate-rich urine would be soaked up by their bedding, and eventually spread over farmland – where it could make its way through the water system.
On top of that, nitrate fertilisers would be needed to grow fodder and grain for them, she said.
Wongan Hills had an “appalling” environmental track record, she said.
The company is currently the subject of Environment Court action over claims it sprayed and cleared a large swathe of an at-risk native plant from its paddocks to plant oats – destroying almost a third of its national population.
Kaitorete Spit, a narrow stretch of land separating Lake Ellesmere from the sea, is home to about 90% of the country's shrubby tororaro, muehlenbeckia astonii – famous for its heart-shaped green leaves – most of which can be found on a single farm.
ECan initially declined a request for the community to present its concerns at Thursday’s regional council meeting.
General counsel Catherine Schache said the council had a legal obligation to follow proper process, and to take into account only the matters the Resource Management Act provides for.
“This process does not allow for information to be presented to council at this time, which is why we have declined the request.”
However, several councillors – including chair Jenny Hughey – came out to meet with the group before the meeting.
They were in an “awkward position” as councillors, she said, as it would be staff or an independent commissioner who made the final decision on the applications – not them.
ECan later invited representatives into the meeting to speak to the petitions.