The Ministry of Environment,…

ERO number

019-2219

Comment ID

48642

Commenting on behalf of

Individual

Comment status

Comment approved More about comment statuses

Comment

The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks should take this opportunity to correct an error in the table of circumstances for significant threats.

The circumstance tables for pesticide application still say that Atrazine, Dicamba, Dichlorophenoxy Acetic Acid (2,4-D), MCPA (2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid ), MCPB (4-(4-chloro-2-methylphenoxy)butanoic acid ), Mecoprop, Metalaxyl, Metolachlor or s-Metolachlor are significant threats in a WHPA A when application is in an area greater than 10 ha.

This is a mathematical impossibility.

No matter how hard you try, you can't fit 10 ha. into a 100 m radius circle (WHPA A).

A 100 m radius circle has an area of 3.1415926536 ha.

Therefore, none of those pesticides are significant threats in a WHPA A but they can be significant in a WHPA B which is further away from the well.

This does make sense and needs to be corrected.

They should make all the listed pesticide chemicals significant threats in a WHPA A regardless of the area of application.

The result would be that pesticide use in the WHPA A would be managed.

The way things currently stand they are not significant threats and are therefore not managed by any Part IV policies under the Source Protection Plans.