Environment Southland 'neglected' Waituna Lagoon, says Forest & Bird

Tuesday, 30 July 2019

A Southland Water and Land Plan document.

Environment Southland has neglected its obligations to the internationally significant Waituna Lagoon, the Forest and Bird Protection Society says.

The society's lawyer Sally Gepp criticised Environment's Southland's failure to set limits on the amount of nutrients entering the lagoon during an Environment Court appeals hearing on Tuesday.

During her closing submission to the first part of the appeal hearing for the proposed Southland Water and Land Plan, Gepp said a Waituna Lagoon technical group in 2013 had identified evidence suggesting the lagoon had become increasingly vulnerable.

The group recommended a 50 per cent cut in nutrients [including nitrogen and phosphorous] into the lagoon, she said.

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'Despite that alarming advice, the council deliberately did not take a regulatory response.'

The focus had instead been on non regulatory interventions, with the council initiating an 'emergency response' which involved significant discussions about next steps, and the setting up of groups including a Waituna working party and the Whakamana te Waituna Project, a multi million dollar response to the area.

Gepp said there was no regulatory response because 'the level of stress was so high that Environment Southland felt that the risk of putting someone over the edge by bringing in regulation at that point was very high'.

Rather than championing the regulatory change needed to arrest the decline at the Waituna Lagoon, Environment Southland had neglected its obligations to the critically important site, she said.

She believed it 'must have been obvious' that without a regulatory response controlling land use in the catchment, it could never succeed in achieving the massive nutrient reduction needed.

Forest & Bird want a separate freshwater management unit - in which limits will be set on the amount of contaminants allowed into waterways - created in the plan for the Waituna catchment, to ensure it remains in the spotlight as a focus for targeted action.

The Waituna Lagoon was one the first sites in the world to be named 'a wetland of significance' under the Ramsar Convention.

Concerns for the lagoon's future have been held for years.

In 2011, Environment Southland said Waituna Lagoon was at high risk of irreversible damage because of land intensification in the surrounding catchment.

The lagoon's water quality was deteriorating because of sediment and nutrient runoff from nearby farms, particularly dairy farms.

Forest & Bird is one of numerous organisations, including Federated Farmers and Fish and Game, which has appealed aspects of the proposed Southland Water and Land Plan.

The hearing, which has been running intermittently, is being heard in the Environment Court in Invercargill this week.

The plan aims to address declining water quality in the region and manage land use activities that contribute to significant levels of contaminants.

Closing submissions from lawyers representing the appellants continues on Wednesday.