Overseer: greenwashing nutrient pollution from intensive agriculture for 20 years

“Overseer” and dairy farming have been in the news a lot lately. ("Govt to assist development of next-gen waterways protection tool", Radio NZ, 11 August 2021, "Hawke's Bay farmers 'frustrated' by review of regulatory tool Overseer", NZ Herald, 11 August 2021 and "Major tool for managing farm pollution gets a fail from reviewers", Stuff, 11 August 2021)

What is Overseer?

According to a Government media release of 11/08/21;

"Overseer and its predecessors have been used for 30 years by many New Zealand (dairy) farmers to estimate nutrient budgets and understand how nutrients are cycled on-farm. Recently, it has been used by a number of Regional Councils as part of their plans and consents to manage nutrient loss to rivers and groundwater.“

An independent expert peer review of Overseer has just been completed and it’s conclusion is that Overseer is not fit for purpose and is unfixable.

The Review conclusion (pages 95 and 96) is;.

"...we do not have confidence that Overseer’s modelled outputs tell us whether changes in farm management reduce or increase the losses of nutrients, or what the magnitude or error of these losses might be."

Why was there an independent expert peer review?

Because the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton wrote a report asking for a review in 2018.

What was the original concern of Simon Upton?

Simon Upton said (on page 7);

“This investigation is about Overseer’s fitness for purpose in a regulatory context. Can we be confident that its estimates of nutrient loss provide regional councils with a basis for making regulatory decisions, notwithstanding the simplifications and approximations that are inevitable in having recourse to models?”

Upton was also concerned that privately owned proprietary software was not transparent and neither it’s model structure or results had been independently verified.

So what’s the big issue now this independent peer review has been released?

Well the answer is “No” to Simon Upton’s question; can there be confidence in Overseer’s estimates of nutrient losses when regulating agricultural intensification under the RMA?

However, the Government response is to fudge the issue. In the Beehive media release they down play the peer review conclusion in bullet points.

• Report finds shortcomings in Overseer nutrient management tool
• Overseer will be supported while a next generation of the tool is developed and/or additional tools are made available

Minister for the Environment David Parker states;

“Despite its shortcomings Overseer has been a useful tool to build awareness and influence practices to manage nutrient loss at the farm and catchment level”

Minister for the Environment David Parker is minimising and therefore denying the peer review's conclusion. Parker in an interview with Radio NZ stated that Overseer isn't fatally flawed. Look for my underlining

"The Overseer tool has been used by Regional Councils to estimate what the nutrient pollution coming from a farm into water ways and it turns out there's some problems with it. That doesn't necessarily make it fatally flawed but those problems are significant."

And he states that Overseer can indicate the relative change in nutrient flows after a change of farm practise:

"We need to look at whether its still got really sound utility as a regulatory tool on say on a flat dairy farm on which it probably is quite accurate on and lets face it that's where most of our dairying is on flat land but there are some councils who instead of using it just to measure the relative performance of a change on farm because even if its not accurate as to the absolute number it does give you an indication if you change your practice of things getting better or worse and that's very useful."

What’s wrong with what David Parker is saying?

The peer review gave a black and white answer. Overseer can't give reliable estimates of either relative or absolute nutrient losses from farms. Yet David Parker made a 180 degree contrary statement to Radio NZ that Overseer can usefully estimate relative nutrient losses from farms.

Parker and the Government need to accept that Overseer is fatally flawed. It isn't fit for purpose for regulating agricultural intensification. Parker is treating the issue as shades of grey. There are problems, but these can be addressed, work can be done, and Overseer can be supported and improved.

Parker's assertions completely fly in the face of the peer review's conclusions. I don't see how any sufficiently informed reader of the peer review could possibly see the Government work program and Parker's statements as logical and valid responses to the peer review's conclusion.

So how does this fit in with the context of resource consents and RMA regional plans?

In terms of the regulatory context that Simon Upton was concerned about, I draw three conclusions;

1. Any resource consents that have Overseer conditions - those conditions are now unenforceable on the consent holder.
2. The regional council process that led to the granting of consents for agricultural intensification relied for their conclusion of "adverse effects mitigated" on the inappropriate use of a fatally flawed model.
3. Any regional plan rules (i.e. Manawatu Whanganui Regional Council’s One Plan) where Overseer was used to manage and therefore allow intensification were based again on the inappropriate use of a fatally flawed model.

What are the environmental organisations saying?

I agree with Greenpeace who said that Overseer had supported dairy conversions and intensification. Overseer was an excuse for allowing too much synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and too many cows to be crammed onto the land, despite worsening freshwater quality and drinking water contamination. Overseer justified the over-application of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and had been embedded in resource consents.

“From the start, Overseer has been peddled by fertiliser companies as a means to sell more fertiliser – the very thing that is wrecking rivers and driving intensive dairying.”

“That’s no surprise given that Overseer is managed by the fertiliser companies that make a killing off farmers dumping synthetic nitrogen fertiliser onto the land,”

Overseer has been unequivocally unmasked as not just an imperfect tool used inappropriately in the RMA context to justify more intensive horticulture and dairy farming, but as propaganda for environmentally damaging agricultural intensification.

David Parker’s statements and intentions to continue with Overseer with incremental improvements show he is just a cheerleader for agricultural intensification and it’s ensuing adverse nutrient pollution of our freshwater bodies.

Well that sucks. What should be done about it?

I think the environmental NGOs need to get a declaration from the Environment Court that Overseer is unusable in any consenting or planning context. The Government needs to be stopped from propping Overseer up with incremental fudges so it can still act as a fig-leaf of faked mitigation for agricultural intensification.

An appendix on the independent peer review of Overseer

The citation for the independent peer review is Overseer whole-model review Assessment of the model approach, MPI Technical Paper no: 2021/12 Prepared for the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment by the Science Advisory Panel ISBN No: 978-1-99-100936-4 (online) ISSN No: 2253-3923 (online)

Here are the relevant conclusions from the independent review.

On page 90 in para 10.2.3 "The limitations of the overarching structure of Overseer notably impair the ability of the model to produce trustworthy absolute or relative predictions (see 10.2.1). These challenges with the overarching model structure are likely to overshadow any appropriately modelled behaviours represented by the model microstructure."

On page 93 "As highlighted in 10.2, Overseer’s structure, data, and behaviour suggest predictions of absolute and relative nutrient losses are likely inaccurate."

On pages 95 and 96 a summary of the panel's findings and conclusion.

"Our core concerns are that Overseer:

• Is a steady state model attempting to simulate a dynamic, continually varying system;
• Uses monthly time-steps;
• Uses average climate data and, therefore, cannot model episodic events, or capture responses to climate variation;
• Does not balance mass;
• Does not account for variation in water and nutrient distribution in the soil profile;
• Does not adequately accommodate deep-rooting plants;
• Focuses on nitrate and omits ammoniacal nitrogen and organic matter dynamics; and
• Lacks consideration of surface water and nutrient transport, as well as critical landscape factors.

As a result of these concerns, we do not have confidence that Overseer’s modelled outputs tell us whether changes in farm management reduce or increase the losses of nutrients, or what the magnitude or error of these losses might be."

Neil Armstrong coal mines carbon dioxide and global warming the High Court moon walks us to a very hot place

On the same day as the death of Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to step onto the Moon, became public, the New Zealand High Court moon-walked its way to it's own off-the-world moment. It decided that greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are off-limits in the planning for an open cast coal mine. That's as just as 'out of this world' as denying that the Moon landings ever happened.

On Saturday, two bits of news struck home to me very strongly. The first was the death of moon-landing astronaut Neil Armstrong. The second was the decision of the New Zealand High Court that for new open-cast coal mines, their carbon dioxide emissions and global warming are legally and jurisdictionally unrelated in the Resource Management Act.

The moon landing. I remember very well as a seven year old listening attentively to the 'one small step' broadcast in 1969. The whole class was silent under the spell of our teacher's scratchy transistor radio.

It's one of my most strongly held memories of my childhood. I guess that reflects well on that class of seven-year olds. They stopped playing bullrush, sniffing with colds, and fighting over play-lunchs to listen attentively to the unfolding of one of humanity's most historic moments.

While I was still fondly remembering the Moon landing, the next news item struck.

It was the New Zealand High Court decision barring discussion of carbon dioxide emissions when coal mines seek Resource Management Act consents (see Radio NZ, NBR and TV3 and the Otago Daily Times).

Of course this is about the Perth coal company Bathurst Resources and their Escarpment Mine Project.

Bryan Walker of Hot Topic has posted that this project represents New Zealand doing a Pontius Pilate and washing its hands of the emissions.

I have previously posted that the decisions by councils and the Environment Court to date reflect the zombie ETS infecting the Resource Management Act with climate madness.

My Saturday morning reverie of the Moon landing was rudely stopped and I sort of grumbled to myself;

"Open-cast coal mines and global warming are unrelated!! Thats about as sensible as saying the Moon landings were faked by NASA. Neil Armstrong would just have smacked someone in the face!"

From small half-asleep reactions, blog posts do grow. With the wee footnote that it was actually Buzz Aldrin who punched the Moon landing denier.

I could do a review of the legal issues, but that would be just more legal-climate yadda yadda. I will just note that back in the early 1990s, the Bolger National Government not only considered that greenhouse gas emissions were an adverse effect under the Resource Management Act; they also considered the RMA to be one of the main tools to deal with global warming.

As for the science of it, I will just point to a couple James Hansen charts from his The Case for Young People paper.

The first is cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. Approving new coal mines adds to cumulative global emissions of carbon dioxide. The second chart shows likely scenarios for temperature. The more carbon dioxide accumulates, the higher the likely temperature.

The facts are that each time a new coal mine is approved, we are just adding to the temperature overshoot above two degrees.

Why is it that the High Court can't apply this simple logic? Why are we even in a position where the High Court can sever the undeniable link between new coal mines, the volumes of carbon dioxide accumulating globally, and the inevitable temperature rise? What has has happened to our legal and planning systems to make this sort of decision possible?

To me this outcome - where the global effects of more GHG emissions are legally severed from approval of a new coal mine - is just as 'out of this world' as denying that the Moon landings even happened.

Meridian misjudged millions on the Mokihinui hydro dam

Gareth Hughes blogs that energy company Meridian's persistent advocacy for Mokihinui River hydro dam proposal, including obtaining resource consents, has now been proven to be a waste of 18 million dollars now that Meridian has withdrawn the proposal and the consents.

Gareth is bang on to describe the Mokihinui Dam proposal as ‘far-fetched’ and ‘unconsentable’. It’s the Conservation Act not the the Resource Management Act that makes the dam proposal ‘unpermit-able’ (if thats even a word!).

The Mokihinui River is conservation land. The Minister of Conservation can’t just give away conservation areas for non-conservation purposes.

The case law is a 1995 High Court declaration Buller Electricity Ltd v Attorney-General [1995] 3 NZLR 344 that said that the Minister of Conservation was correct to decline to give away the Ngakawau River for a hydro dam as it wasn’t a conservation purpose.

Meridian and its advisors have only themselves to blame for the $18m dead-loss (and also DOC’s costs). When they initially scoped out the feasibility of the proposal, they should have realised that the Buller Electricity precedent was a very high hurdle to cross.

I can only presume that their initial scoping suffered from ‘optimism bias’. It was also their choice to pursue resource consents before receiving formal access to the conservation land from the Minister of Conservation.

The zombie ETS infects the RMA with climate insanity

The Environment Court won't consider James Hansen evidence on coal and climate change in the appeal against the Escarpment opencast coal mine consents

The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme ("NZETS") has become living-dead "zombie" legislation that infects other statutes with its own virulent climate change insanity. The example is a recent decision by the Environment Court that it can't consider climate change impacts of coal mining as described by James Hansen in the Forest and Bird appeal of the resource consents for the opencast 'Escarpment' coal mine.

The other week I saw the zombie genre film 28 Weeks Later on tv. The turning point in the film was when British actor Robert Carlyle kissed his wife and was instantly infected with the 'Rage Virus', which of course meant he had to turn into a homicidal-virus spreading-living-dead zombie who would then infect the rest of the surviving population of post-Rage Virus London. A great zombie movie movement!

For me, another much less amusing zombie moment, was last week's news from TVNZ, Radio NZ, the Otago Daily Times, and the Dominion Post, that the Environment Court had declared that climate change effects from coal mining will not be considered in Forest and Bird's appeal of the consents for the opencast coal mine the Escarpment_Mine_Project.

For background to the Escarpment Mine Project, including James Hansen's videotaped climate change evidence given to Jeanette Fitzsimons, and the conservation and biodiversity issues, see Claire Brownings Pundit post. And there is wildlife photographer Rod Morris' view that the mine proposal is simply ecological destruction on a massive scale. Botanist Alan Mark reminds us that the coal measure landscape of the Denniston Plateau is the only one left as Solid Energy have destroyed the other one - the Stockton Plateau.

According to the Dominion Post, Judge Newhook's decision was "that regulatory activity on the important topic of climate change is taken firmly away from regional government and made the subject of appropriate attention from time to time by central government by way of activity at a national level".

If we are at all unclear what that means, coal apologist and Stratera boss Chris Baker explains that this means the NZETS; "We have an emissions trading scheme, we are well ahead of our obligation internationally...".

The utter ill-logic of the "we have an ETS, more coal mining and exporting is okay" argument is that although the NZETS applies to all coal mined within New Zealand, all coal exported is exempted. Bathhurst Resources intends to export all the coal from the Escarpment Mine. So the application of the zombie NZETS to coal mining means that there will be no carbon price on the coal from the Escarpment Mine.

And this zombie effect of the NZETS in making coal "alive but dead" to a carbon price, then infects the application of our great sustainability-promoting externality-internalising Resource Management Act. The coal exports are "regulated" (in reality protected) by the NZETS. Therefore the RMA doesn't apply.

The consequence will be that the Environment Court will not be considering the effects of the Escarpment Mine on a level playing field. They will attempt to reach a broad overall judgement of what is sustainable. They will balance the economic effects of more export dollars and jobs on the West Coast against the many adverse environmental impacts on a unique coal measure ecosystem full of rare and endangered endemic species. But the scales of justice won't be fairly weighted, as the adverse impact and the externality of the greenhouse effect of the coal have already been taken off the adverse effects side of the ledger.

The NZETS is truly a ZOMBIE.

The Ministry has fallen

Is the Environment Court a bulwark against emissions-intensive projects such as open-cast coal mines that will provide the coal that will exacerbate climate change? You would think it would be wouldn't you?

You would think that our great history-making sustainability-promoting Resource Management Act would give a fair shake of the stick to the idea of considering climate change as some of the possible adverse effects of a proposal.

Especially if the proposal is an opencast export-oriented coal mine on protected conservation land, where adverse effects on biodiversity and on rare natural landforms would obviously be an issue.

Apparently not.

Bathhurst Resources Limited are a relatively new coal mining company in New Zealand. Bathhurst Resources would like to construct an open cast mine on an area of 200 hectares of conservation land on the southern Denniston Plateau, on the West Coast near Westport. Bathhurst would extract and export between one and four million tonnes of coal a year. Bathhurst call it the Buller Coal Project. Wikipedia calls it the Escarpment Mine Project. The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society calls it the wipe out of the ecology of the Denniston Plateau. Bathhurst Resources and Solid Energy have successfully made a pre-emptive strike against the appeals of the council decisions to grant resource consents to Bathhurst Resources for their proposed open cast coal mine in the Mt Rochfort Conservation Area on the West Coast's Denniston Plateau - the Escarpment Mine Project.

Bathhurst Resources and Solid Energy have successfully obtained a declaration from the Environment Court that climate change effects from the combustion of the coal cannot be considered in the appeal of the resource consents.

Dominion Post - Miner eyes fast-track option for Denniston

TVNZ Climate change ruling irresponsible

Forest and Bird - Court decision ignores serious threats of climate change

Otago Daily Times - Court will not consider climate change.

I am left wondering if the judge concerned bothered to attend one of James Hansen's talks last year.

It seems that the Environment Court is a bit like the Ministry of Magic in the Harry Potter novels. It denied that Voldemort had returned. It then weakly opposed him and then "The Ministry has fallen" under control of the Deatheaters.

Environment Canterbury's RMA heresy

Claire Browning of the Pundit blog, asked some follow-up questions on my long comment on the Creech Report on Environment Canterbury and its performance in managing Canterbury's water resources. Claire's questions are in italics.

"I found it (the Creech Report) cavalier in documenting its justification for dismembering a democratically elected body"

Yes I agree totally. The report has large portions that are just a grab-bag of embittered comments from district councils and consultants.

"on the question of whether ECan had been misapplying the RMA, the discussion was very muddled, and the evidence presented very thin".

Yes again I agree with that too. The Creech Report is an inherently political document. Kennedy Graeme's speech, as well as being enjoyably eloquent, was pretty much right in referring to it's circular logic and preconceived conclusion. A contact informed me that the review team arrived late for their day at Ecan and left early.

I think Creech and Doug Martin, who is a very experienced operator-around-politicians, knew they had a 'rush-job' on. I think they also knew that Nick Smith and Rodney Hide didn't really want detailed analysis. It would have been wasted on them! I think they also knew that whatever they recommended, Smith would probably not follow it any way (Remember the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance?).

So I think they deliberately gave Nick Smith an extreme recommendation (or a "hatchet job") which would give him the justification and the space to do whatever he wants to. As whatever Smith decides will appear well within the scope of the Creech recommendations and therefore more 'balanced' and 'moderate'.

"I would have thought the job is to protect the environment in accordance with the RMA, which would seem to be the real bone of contention -- ie, whether there has been an undue or improper focus on the environment by ECan, in terms of the RMA"

You make a good point here. This comes back to what "in accordance with the RMA" means to the various actors in the tragedy!

The Creech Report RMA experts are almost as vicious as Creech about Ecan's "improper focus on the environment". That is because Bryan Jenkins (and therefore Ecan) has committed a heresy against RMA orthodoxy. Jenkins stated that Ecan has not been able to apply sustainability limits to groundwater because the RMA is 'enabling legislation' (Rather than because the NRRP is as helpful as the Book of Mormon. Or because Ecan's senior planner and senior hydrogeologist were poor witnesses).

RMA orthodoxy, as espoused by the MfE Commissioners course and by RMA lawyers, planners and consultants, is 'weak sustainability rules okay'. For Jenkins to say otherwise is a heresy against the RMA mainstream. Jenkins also publicly and explicitly criticised a decision of a hearing panel - the decision to approve more groundwater abstraction from the arguably over-allocated Rakaia-Selwyn groundwater zone. Also heretical.

The Resource Management Act and property rights

I have uploaded another paper to the real Robin Johnson's Economics Web Page.

It is 'The Resource Management Act and property rights', from the Proceedings of the Annual Conference New Zealand Association of Economists and the Agricultural Economics Society (NZ Branch), 24-26 August 1992.