Anna Bensemann
Regulations imposed under the RMA in 2020 will see farmers having to exclude stock from rivers with a bed of one metre or more at any point within a property by either July 2023 or July 2025, depending on the type of stock.
The Stock Exclusion Regulations 2020 were designed to control how and when stock had access to waterways to prevent damage to river and lake banks and the margins of wetlands, and to avoid defecation into water by stock, contributing to overall poor water quality.
Not all stock is treated equally with a focus on dairy cattle and dairy support cattle, intensively grazed beef cattle and deer, and pigs generally to be excluded from wide rivers by July 2023. Beef cattle and deer on low slope land, which is not intensively grazed, are required to be excluded from waterways by 1 July 2025, giving farms with lower stocking rates longer to achieve compliance with the regulations.
Exclusion means stock are kept three metre back from the top of the bank of a river or edge of a lake, unless they are crossing the waterbody. This is known as the three-metre rule. Stock may cross a waterway without the need for a bridge or culvert if the crossing is limited to twice in any month, and stock are supervised to cross directly. However, if you require your stock to cross rivers more often than twice monthly, then a bridge or culvert for a dedicated crossing is required.
There are some exceptions, in relation to areas where the riverbed is highly mobile and therefore permanent crossings are not practical, but requirements around ensuring stock move directly through riverbeds and are supervised during the crossings will still apply.
Culverts and bridge installation is often managed by the District or Regional Authority through their district or regional planning framework. In some cases, in order to achieve compliance with the regulations, you may need to seek a resource consent for earthworks close to a waterway, or for the installation of the bridge or culvert itself. It’s worth checking your local rules to ensure achieving compliance with the Resource Management Act regulation does not create an additional non-compliance with your local planning rules.
The regulations were designed to give landowners time to install fences, and to ensure wide rivers had dedicated stock crossings at critical points. The impact on some waterways will be clearly obvious because of these provisions with less sediment in waterways and improved stream health.
For some landowners, fencing and stock exclusion will not be overly onerous, but for some larger dairy and cattle farms the regulations impose significant costs which will need to be factored into compliance budgets, and farm planning for the next 3 – 4 years in order achieve compliance on time.
Farmers must remember that their budgets and timeframes should include resource consenting costs so that the good work to fence a stream doesn’t result in a fine for not complying with the local RMA rules.
