FAQs

It is a service to assist landowners in the Lake Rotorua catchment with meeting their Nitrogen Discharge Allowance. It provides funding for landowners to work with Land Use Advisors from approved independent firms to produce Nitrogen Management Plans and a level of Business Planning support.

Landowners can apply by contacting Bay of Plenty Regional Council. A Nitrogen Discharge Assessment Report (NDAR) will be carried out on their property, they will then select a Land Use Advisor (AgFirst, Fruition, Headlands, Opus Consultants and PerrinAg) who will produce a Nitrogen Management Plan (NMP). If a landowner decides that the NMP may be too difficult to achieve they may be eligible for Business Planning support.

It is FREE. Landowners are able to get a NMP developed for them at no cost. NMP is a requirement of Resource Consent under the new rules.

Landowners are encouraged to access this service as soon as possible so that they are prepared for when rules are operative. It allows more time for landowners to make the changes to their land as set out in their Nitrogen Management Plan.

It provides funding to improve farming systems and tap in to innovation.

Access to funded independent farm advice. (Small Block Owners may not have had expert advice in the past)

There is funding available for ALL affected landowners to have a Nitrogen Management Plan developed by a Land Use Advisor. There is limited funding available for those who require business planning support as their NDA is too difficult to achieve. This funding will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

• Funding runs out in 2017 when landowners need resource consent, 2022 for SBO.
• $3000 Business Planning advice for small properties
• $6000 Business Planning advice for larger properties
• Every property to access A&S for NMP

Where a landowner’s NDA is too difficult to achieve they can access funding for business planning and support. The landowner must contact Regional Council, then select a Land Use Advisor (funding caps above)

The primary aim of the business planning support is where the NDA cannot be met through some land use change or farm systems changes.

An opportunity to significantly change a farming operation, and link to Incentives, may also identify a need for Business Planning Support.

Any business planning support work must be able to result in an NMP to ensure that any proposed changes to farm land-use or operation will meet the NDA. Given that some of our LUAs do not undertake Overseer modelling and NMP development this may mean that a different LUA needs to be engaged to review the business planning output and generate an NMP.

Within reason

The current proposal is that 2001/04 benchmarking forms the basis of the NDA.

The NDA will be calculated using the sector average of the farm sector which the property is in – generally based on 2001/04 land use.

The rules could change the way the NDA is calculated so the provisional will not become final until the rules are agreed.

If the property has a benchmark and the proposed rules become operative and the same version of Overseer is used in calculating the pNDA and final NDA, the two figures will be the same.

If the rules change, funding will be provided for your NMP to be re-worked by the Land Use Advisor.

At this stage it will be in September 2015

The two targets come from the Regional Policy Statement. The 2032 target is for the achievement of the sustainable load (435 tonnes). The 2022 date is the date by which 70% of the required reduction for the catchment is to be achieved

The amount will relate to the managed reduction pathway that is developed in each Nitrogen Management Plan. There will be an expectation that these documents will plot a pathway to 2032. There is a 2022 target of 70% but this relates to the catchment – not properties. Managed reduction will be described within the rules and the description will need to include the progressive lowering of nitrogen loss from properties. For an individual property, approximately 30% of the total required reduction will need to be 2022.

The Regional Council has been working with Lake Rotorua Stakeholder Advisory Group (StAG) for nearly three years to establish a sustainable water quality solution for Lake Rotorua.  StAG has worked to inform Council decisions on the solution for Lake Rotorua, including the Integrated Framework approach (Rules, Gorse and Incentives), which spreads the cost of the solution between the ratepayer, taxpayer and landowners.

StAG has also played a critical role in informing the content of the new rules and how they will work. Council has also included additional consultation and notification processes (above legal requirements) to make sure it gets the rules right. In addition the Regional Council has made a significant investment in water quality science for the lakes to underpin the rules. For these reasons, Council is confident that a rules framework including a nitrogen discharge allowance for properties will be part of the long term water quality solution for Lake Rotorua.

The 435 T nitrogen target comes from research work originally done by NIWA in the 1980s. At that time water quality was clearly deteriorating and sewage inputs had increased significantly. The community had identified the water quality from the 1960s as the desirable long term target. The 435t nitrogen equates to the nitrogen input that would achieve the long term lake water quality target identified by the community. This number has been reconfirmed more recently by University of Waikato lake modelling that tested a range of nitrogen input scenarios.

Not all the N leaving the root zone ends up in the lake. Some of the nitrogen is lost through various processes including denitrification or N being absorbed onto organic and inorganic matter below the root zone.  This is known as attenuation. The amount of attenuation varies both over time (temporally) and spatially and depends on many factors including soil type and geology.

Once nitrogen leaves the root zone there are a number of pathways that it can take. Certain processes within the deep soil and aquifer can hold some nitrogen, release it as a gas to the atmosphere or leach with the soil and ground water to eventually come out in our streams or lake. Generally nitrogen is soluble and tends to leach readily in ground water, so soil reserves are considered temporary storage only, until it is again released. Under certain condition nitrogen can be released as a gas back to the atmosphere. The main portion of the nitrogen will always leach to ground water and reach our streams and lake.

Even for properties where it might take 100 years to reach the lake a significant portion will get there in time. This means there will be a delay in the nitrogen getting to the lake. This is the current situation where the quantity of nitrogen held in the ground water is more than the quantity reaching the lake. It is only a matter of time before this plume of nitrogen reaches the lake. It is predicted from research that the level of nitrogen reaching the lake will increase before land use reductions can take effect in reducing the load reaching the lake.

All parts of the community are part of the solution for reaching the sustainable lake load. Currently the Rotorua City sewage discharges to the Whakarewarewa Forest and from that application about 30 T nitrogen reaches the lake.  In comparison, pastoral land use is contributing more than 500 T nitrogen annually to the lake.

In 1990 the Rotorua Lakes Council commissioned an advanced treatment plant and land disposal area designed at reducing nutrient discharges to the lake. So far this has been the single most significant action to reduce nutrients reaching the lake. At that time the nitrogen load from sewage reaching the lake reduced by about 150 T. In 2013 Rotorua Lakes Council commissioned an additional treatment plant that addresses nitrogen discharge, to ensure that they can comply with their 30 T nitrogen target.

Landowners are required to meet their Nitrogen Discharge Allowance. Incentives are interested in any further reductions of Nitrogen made to potentially purchase it. Contact Te Taru White admin@lakerotoruaincentives.nz for more information.

The purpose of the integrated framework is to improve current land use practices or alternative land use to reach Nitrogen targets. Funding is available for supporting landowners in achieving this. It is not the intention of Council to purchase farm land but rather assist in reducing N discharge. More funding than is available would be needed to purchase enough farms to reach the sustainable lake load.

The rules will require owners of properties between 10 and 40 ha and land <10 ha that are not low intensity to apply for a Resource Consent by 2022.  LMOs will be progressively contacting all affected landowners in the catchment well ahead of the 2022 deadline. While small block owners can access Advice and Support early, it is recommended that they hold off until 2018/2019 because it makes more sense to develop the NMP based on circumstances closer to 2022.