My local Council would be very happy to grant me extra land titles were I to hand over to them two pieces of pristine native bush – but only after I pay a few thousand dollars to some expert biologist to confirm that they are actually pristine.

I’ve already decided to politely decline their kind offer, on the simple basis that I don’t trust them to not suddenly use this as an excuse to stop me doing what I want on the farm.

Today’s news provides further support for my decision: (I don’t normally link to Stuff but no alternative here):

A US family is selling their Hawke’s Bay farm after losing a “philosophical” dispute with the local council over whether part of their land should be designated an Outstanding Natural Feature. Curt and Tricia Zant moved to New Zealand in 2015 and were granted Overseas Investment Office approval to buy Waimoana Farm, a 494 hectare sheep and beef farm on the coast near Kairakau, east of Waipawa.

When the Central Hawke’s Bay District Council issued its Proposed District Plan (PDP) in 2021, it included eleven sites identified as Outstanding Natural Features (ONF), meaning they would be subject to restrictions around development.

The following reminded me of the scene in the Blackadder IV episode, Corporal Punishment, where Melchett summarily fines George £50 for wasting the court’s time by turning up.

Last month the Environment Court ordered the Zants to pay costs of $21,680 to the council, after Judge Melinda Dickey found their conduct had “unnecessarily lengthened proceedings and constituted an abuse of the Court’s processes on a number of occasions”.

Meantime in other local news of legal insanity are the final blows being struck against my District’s water supply, designed by Council and built by farmers forty years ago.

I’d already written a couple of posts about this: A small example of National’s failures (2021) and Water and Bureaucrats (2023). The first one levered off of an article from Ele in her Homepaddock blog where she highlighted National’s thundering complaint that “Labour must stop flooding rural NZ with pointless and onerous regulation”:

“As it stands, the Water Services Bill would expose tens of thousands of rural water schemes to disproportionate bureaucracy, just so they can continue supplying water between, for example, a farmhouse, a dairy shed and workers’ quarters,” Mr Luxon says.

“Despite warnings from National and major sector bodies at select committee, the bill will require Taumata Arowai to track down and register around 70,000 farm supply arrangements, each of which will need to write safety and risk management plans.“

To be fair to our local bureaucrats in Council they’ve actually fought the good fight since 2018, playing Sir Humphrey as best they could, and they bought us seven years.

But the time has come – National-led government and all – and I am now looking at the online survey we discussed in a recent district meeting, that asks us to vote on whether or not to shut down all use of drinking water from the scheme. It only amounts to about 10% of the volume and is thus not worth building in the sort of filtration and treatment at source that enable the scheme to meet the standards required. In 2017 the cost was estimated at $6 million and it will not have gone down, plus the fact that Opex would not be small, given that staff would be constantly at work on maintenance, as they are with some other similar schemes.

No financial assistance from the government either, to meet the standards they’re imposing.

So, like many other aspects of our modern democracy, this vote is a joke. A response of 75% YES is required and if it fails that then the Council would be forced to shut down the whole scheme. About the only issue considered was the fact that there are many users who did not attend the meeting because they’re workers or perhaps just renters of farm houses, who have no idea where their water comes from and would vote “NO” if they see the threat of shutting it off – not realising that this will happen even if they vote NO, and in fact especially if they vote NO!

As for the people who have used the system for drinking water for forty years, including the local school – all without a single incidence of sickness, let alone death, due to the fact that we all have local filtration systems at the point of use – we’re all facing spending tens of thousands of dollars on alternatives: springs, boring new wells, pumps, tanks, etc.

All for fucking nothing. A regressive step into the past.

Thanks for nothing Labour.

And a special thanks-for-nothing to National and Chris Luxon.

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My original response to Ele: (2021)

Again I have to point out that National has already failed in this regard. Before the Clarke administration left office they passed legislation that would tighten up considerably on water schemes in general. Throughout the nine years of the Key administration the implementation moved closer and closer to rural water schemes.

It finally reached our district in 2017, when all the farmers of our district were called to a meeting held by the local Council to discuss the fate of our scheme.

The system was designed by the Council in the early 1980’s and then built largely by the farmers by 1984, providing a gravity-fed, year-round, drought-resistant scheme. To farmers like my Dad it was a god-send after decades of faffing around with springs, wells, dams, water rams, crude filtration systems and pumps.

And now we were told that the regulations had finally caught up with us, that the system would require millions of dollars to upgrade to the new standards and even then the houses would have to be disconnected from the supply, pushing us fifty years back into a past of springs, wells and pumps.

Fortunately the Council, who were very much on our side in understanding what crap this all was (in forty years of operation not one sickness, let alone death, has been traced to the system), and they concocted a classic Sir Humphrey letter to government explaining in classic Sir Humphrey fashion that, given all the new water discussions going on with Labour, the Council could not move on changing the system until they were sure what was needed.

It bought us three years. I’m afraid that I rather offended a National party woman at the meeting who wanted to conduct a petition that could be carried to government by our local National MP. My suggestion instead was that if we all dug in our pockets for a few thousand dollars each we could probably get $150K together and – considering his “good looking horses” tax legislation – get it to NZ First on the understanding that Winston Peters could get a similar change made to the Black Letter law by specifically excluding our district.

It got a hearty laugh and “hear, hear’s”, but went down with her like a cup of cold sick.

But the truth is that this legislation sat on the books throughout National’s nine-year reign. Perhaps we were not enough aware of it and the huge cost impact for no effective gain in safety or water quality, but surely our National rural MP’s were?

And now I’m expected to get all excited and revved up about National’s “fightback” against this new legislation? At this stage I’m looking at National and thinking, why bother now? The damage is done and will be further done before National returns to government.