Farmer furious about ‘hypocrisy’ of ECan chairman

Canterbury farmer Daryl Butterick says he is shocked by the ‘hypocrisy’ of Environment Canterbury chairman.

Peter Scott, the chairman of the Canterbury Regional Council, has resigned pending an investigation into recent media comments about his “illegal” farming activities.

During a recent interview with Newstalk ZB, Scott said two of his irrigation consent applications had been delayed for six years by another government agency.

He was waiting for approval “to irrigate a piece of land that they didn’t know existed on my property before I could get my agri-environmental plan and my land use consent.”

“I’m going to go ahead and ignore the fact that I don’t have one, so I’m essentially operating illegally, and I’m the chairman of Environment Canterbury.”

Butterick said the hypocritical situation was surreal as farmers in Canterbury saw a stream dry up as they waited for approval to introduce water into it.

“We followed the rules with this consent review and got hammered by it, and here was the boss wandering around and doing his own thing.”

Locals have been critical of the Ashburton/Hakatere River consent review, which was intended to create a level playing field and keep more water in the river, but it seems more like “one rule for some”, he said.

The Greenstreet farmers wanted to divert water from O’Shea’s Creek to Greenstreet Creek in early February to keep aquatic life alive — not for irrigation purposes — but had to wait for City Council President Stefanie Rixecker to use emergency powers on March 21 to do so. .

If they had simply opened the gate without asking permission, Butterick said, they would have jeopardized their permission.

“We could have lost our clearances altogether.”

The farmers could not risk this because “we are talking about the people’s livelihood, so our hands were tied”.

On the Ecan chairman issue, the regional council found that a parcel of land on Scott’s farm may have been Crown land, but he continued to farm it.

It is understood he has since sold the farm.

Colin Hurst, vice-president of Federated Farmers and a South Canterbury farmer, said it was “more of a breach of technical consent” than a blatant breach.

“It would be good to get an independent assessment of how it turned out.

“But it highlights the lag in obtaining permission.”

A spokesperson for Environment Canterbury said the council was aware of the status of Scott’s consents.

“Sometimes consent applications can be delayed if third-party information is required, as is the case here.”

Scott’s radio interview focused on ECan’s introduction of new procedures to manage the backlog of consent applications.

Ecan’s spokesperson said they would discourage people from operating illegally while they wait for Ecan’s permission.

“I have sympathy, but I would not advise them to operate (illegally).

“Some of these clearances that we do, there’s not a lot of risk involved, but it’s the RMA (Resource Management Act) that we have to deal with, and when we see people doing things that they’re not supposed to do we also have a legal responsibility to ensure that we check that.”

The investigation into Scott will be conducted by an independent external reviewer and is expected to take several weeks

Vice Chairman Craig Pauling has taken over as acting chairman.

Neither ECan nor Scott would comment further while an investigation is ongoing.

By Jonathan Leask, Local Democracy Reporter

■ LDR is local journalism, co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air