The Government has announced its latest water quality proposals called Action for Healthy Waterways. Compiled within a package entitled "Essential Freshwater Package", it comprises a new National Policy Statement for Freshwater (NPS) and new National Environment Standard for Freshwater (NES) and also new Stock Exclusion regulations.
The Package proposes some major changes, above and beyond those at current Regional Council levels on the management of freshwater, with two main objectives:
- to stop further degradation of waterways and start making immediate improvements so that water quality improves within the next five years.
- to reverse past damage and bring waterways and ecosystems to a healthy state within a generation.
To learn more about it, see the documents and links on this page including our Snapshot of Essential Freshwater Proposals (see below).
In the Document Library section of this page there are a number of the MfE and industry documents around the Freshwater proposals if you wish to read further.
For those looking at preparing a submission, there are a number of options. Federated Farmers has prepared two templates, one which is a simple submission form to explain your position as a farmer with some guidance on how to do that and the second is a simplified version of the MfE online form, answering the specific questions they are looking for feedback on. There are 81 questions so please feel free to answer as many or as few as you wish to if you would like to go down that route (these will be available on the website soon)