TRCID-176456519-97 (Word)
Document: TRCID-1188382587-606 (Pdf)
March 2025
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Executive summary
RKM Farms Ltd (the Company) operates a piggery located on 599A South Road at Hawera, in the Tangahoe
Catchment. The piggery is a breeder grower and finishing operation with up to 5,000 pigs and piglets at any
one time, the treated effluent from which is discharged to the Tawhiti Stream or spread onto land and
emissions of odour to air.
This report for the
report is due in the 2026/27 year. No odours were noted or communicated during the monitoring period.
For reference, in the 2023/24 year, consent holders were found to achieve a high level of environmental
performance and compliance for 864 (89%) of a total of 967 consents monitored through the Taranaki
tailored monitoring programmes, while for another 75 (8%) of the consents a good level of environmental
performance and compliance was achieved. A further 26 (3%) of consents monitored
data.
Section 3 discusses the results, their interpretations, and their significance for the environment.
Section 4 presents recommendations to be implemented in the 2024/25 monitoring year.
A glossary of common abbreviations and scientific terms, and a bibliography, are presented at the end of
the report.
1.1.3 The Resource Management Act 1991 and monitoring
The RMA primarily addresses environmental ‘effects’ which are defined as positive or adverse, temporary or
permanent, past,
adverse effects
once sufficient data has been collected.
NPDC were required to investigate the recent erosion of the Waitara East Beach shoreline, as identified
during the previous monitoring period. The investigation determined that the erosion could not be
conclusively attributed to the river mouth training walls or half tide wall and highlighted the historic and
ongoing erosional trends observed along the wider Waitara shoreline.
For reference, in the 2022-2023 year, consent holders
defined as positive or adverse, temporary or
permanent, past, present or future, or cumulative. Effects may arise in relation to:
a. the neighbourhood or the wider community around an activity, and may include cultural and social-
economic effects;
b. physical effects on the locality, including landscape, amenity and visual effects;
c. ecosystems, including effects on plants, animals, or habitats, whether aquatic or terrestrial;
d. natural and physical resources having special
yellow, yellow to green, or green to blue).
A joint taskforce of central and local government representatives sought to use the best
information available to model on a regional and national scale:
The improvements that will be made to water quality in rivers and lakes under
programmes that are planned or underway, on a region-by-region basis;
When the anticipated water quality improvements will be achieved; and
The likely costs of all interventions, and where these costs will
every year.
Map - Key Native Ecosystems in Taranaki.
WHAT MAKES KEY NATIVE
ECOSYSTEMS REGIONALLY
SIGNIFICANT?
Key Native Ecosystems are regionally significant
because they are:
home to nationally or regionally threatened
or at-risk native plant and animal species, or
representative of originally rare ecosystems
and indigenous vegetation now much
reduced from its original extent, and/or
important connections or buffers to other
sites of value, or provide
Environment Court’s 2014 Practice Note. I have read and
agree to comply with that Code. This evidence is within my area of expertise,
except where I state that I am relying upon the specified evidence of another
person. I have not omitted to consider material facts known to me that might
alter or detract from the opinions that I express.
2. RELEVANT PLANNING CONTEXT
Taranaki Regional Air Quality Management Plan
2.1 As noted in 7.2 of the Taranaki Regional Council (TRC)
with select hard fill,
including coastal erosion protection in the form of concrete anchor mass blocks and
armour protection. Drainage measures are also proposed, including subsoil drains
within the engineered fill and a concrete dish drain or kerb and channel along the edge
of the state highway closest to the slope.
5. The use of concrete mass blocks requires excavation of the soft estuarine sediments at the
base of the wall. Large angular rock is to be placed in this cutting to
processes of nature are repopulating New Zealand with birds that are able to live with predators,
while the rest are either adapting or have already gone’. However, Innes & Hay (1990, p. 2528)
concluded that ‘… at least twelve endemic forest bird species or subspecies have yet neither
adapted nor gone, but are declining’; and more recently, Innes et al. (2010, p. 86) concluded that
‘predation by introduced pest mammals continues to be responsible for current declines and
limitation of New Zealand