Fonterra out to stymie rival?

Some Otorohanga residents believe Happy Valley Milk’s proposed plant on the outskirts of the town will affect the landscape and raise environmental issues.

Fonterra shareholders council chairman Duncan Coull, who milks 700 cows on two farms 6km from the proposed site, last month made a detailed submission at a two-day hearing by independent commissioners Alan Withy and Phil Michell on Happy Valley’s resource consent application.

Coull told Rural News he made the submission as “a concerned ratepayer and Otorohanga resident”.

He says preparing the submission took a lot of work and he was happy to make his views known to the commissioners.

Coull will not comment further until the commissioners have announced their decision.

A total of 69 submissions were received -- 34 supporting the project, four neutral and 30 opposed.

The commissioners are seeking more information and will hold more hearings this month; a decision is expected in January.

Coull, also a member of the Otorohanga District Development Board, told the hearing the information provided by Happy Valley Milk was “neither credible nor complete”.

“I have no confidence, as a member of this community, that the adverse effects of this proposal will be appropriately avoided, remedied or mitigated.

“In particular, it is difficult to understand how this proposal would achieve the purpose of the RMA -- the sustainable management of natural and physical resources -- particularly [at a time when] water quality and land use cannot be thought of separately, and when we have admirable targets to achieve in the coming years.”

Coull doesn’t agree with the supposed economic benefits promoted by Happy Valley Milk.

He says the proposed plant’s output of 100,000 tonnes of infant formula annually would make it one of the largest in the world, and it would “significantly impact the rural amenity and the character of our neighbourhood”.

Happy Valley Milk founder and director Randolph van der Burgh told Rural News many valid points were raised at the hearing by different parties. The company will this week provide the commissioners more information as requested.

He remains confident the project will get the green light. He says given the spiral of stagnation and decline in Otorohanga’s local economy the proposal for the plant is a “no-brainer”.

About 300 people would work on its construction and the completed plant would employ 105 people, 60 of them living in the town.

The Otorohanga District Council recommended to the commissioners that Happy Valley Milk’s resource consent application be declined on the grounds that the proposed factory would “compromise the sustainable management of natural and physical resources”.