Processing Industries Continued

By nature of the activities, typically, there may be discharges to water, land or air requiring large quantities of water for food processing purpose. Most of the processing sites are large involving many sophisticated machineries and/or large buildings and/or boilers.

Due to the scale and type of the activities, consents may be required for water abstraction and discharges to water, air or land from the regional council. Most discharges to water and air (e.g. boilers) are referred to as ‘point sources of pollution’ as against nutrient leaching or runoff from farming activities which are referred as ‘non-point sources of pollution’.

Some air discharges such as dust or odour may be referred to as ‘fugitive emissions’ because such discharges are not linked to any ‘point sources’.

While consents are required from the regional council for many activities (referred to as permitted activities under the RMA), some activities may not require resource consent depending on the regional council rules (e.g. stormwater from roof, minor dust emissions from sealed yards, minor odourous emissions).

Whether consented or permitted, compliance is expected at all times. If breached the offences will be similar but the scale of the offence may differ. For this reason every effort should be made to ensure full compliance with the permitted and consented activities.

Most industries employ a dedicated environmental staff onsite to oversee and manage compliance. By being proactive costly legal actions can be avoided along with gaining good track record of environmental compliance.

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