Pembrokeshire farmers deserve a break

Pembrokeshire’s farmers, already badly hit by plummeting milk prices are about to be hit again, this time with new regulations on the way they spread slurry on their land. Bear with me on this question which on the face of it is not one to gladden the heart. But believe me it has the potential to do enormous harm to farmers and our way of life in Pembrokeshire.

 

Farmers should have the option on when they spread their slurry

Every four years the Cleddau river catchment, which covers about 80 per cent of Pembrokeshire’s land area, is tested for nitrates that are largely caused by farm waste flowing into the water system. If they are too high they cause the growth of algae and other harmful organisms. In turn this upsets the fish and plant life that depend on the health of the waters in Milford Haven and the Marine Special Conservation Area beyond.

When the rivers were last tested in 2012 the nitrate levels almost reached the point where the Welsh Government would have been obliged to impose severe restrictions. The farming unions are resigned to this happening at the beginning of next year. Any day now a 12-week consultation period will be launched, followed by an appeals period, with restrictions likely to come into force from January 2017.

If a Nitrates Vulnerable Zone is declared it will have had a massive impact on the 1,800 Pembrokeshire farms that operate within the river catchment area. Farmers will be prevented from spreading slurry on their land between October and February, the winter months when most rainfall occurs. They will be required to ensure they have a capacity to store six months worth of slurry produced by their farms. And they will have to keep strict records of their nitrate discharges.

These new obligations and their costs could be enough to tip many farm operations, already running desperately close to going under, over the edge. Irreparable harm would be done, not just to the lives of the farming families but also to Wales’s agricultural industry. After all Pembrokeshire produces 25 per cent of the Wales’s dairy output and 50 per cent of our potato crop.

So what can be done? In the first place the Welsh Government must produce firm evidence that it is farm slurry that is the sole cause of the harmful nitrate levels. There could be other contributors, such as the Pembroke Power Station which abstracts water from the Haven for cooling, returning it at higher temperatures.

If restrictions are imposed they should be done voluntarily, in ways that mitigate their impact. There could be a collaborative approach between the farmers, the Welsh government and Natural Resources Wales. Farmers could be left to decide themselves when weather conditions allow for spreading slurry on their land. After all July and August can be exceedingly wet months and there are times when October or January can be relatively dry. There should be greater efforts to separate clean and dirty water on farms. For instance, rain run-off from the roofs and yards of farms should be prevented from flowing into slurry containers, with the result that they fill up and overflow.

Such an approach would be less easy to monitor and enforce than the imposition of strict controls. However, the gains for the farmers and the Pembrokeshire’s economy would make it worthwhile. Our farmers deserve the chance to make it work.

Forgotten lessons from the Sea Empress

It’s hard to believe that it was 20 years ago last Monday that the Sea Empress became stranded at the entrance to Milford Haven, causing a spillage of 72,000 tones of crude oil and catastrophic damage to the Pembrokeshire coast. Thousands of seabirds were killed and 120 miles of beaches were contaminated, stretching from St Brides Bay around the southern Pembrokeshire coast and into Carmarthen.  Some beaches were buried under a foot of oil. And although the immediate cleanup took place remarkably quickly, at a cost of £60m, it took the best part of a decade before the ecology of the shoreline fully recovered.

 

Sea Empress stranded off St Ann'e Head at the entrance Milford Haven

Such anniversaries always raise the question: could it happen again? Much has improved. In particular a much enhanced port control operation and command structure means the immediate circumstances that led to the spillage would be unlikely to recur. An inexperienced pilot was allowed to guide the Sea Empress in and took her too close to the north shore which led to the grounding. That was on a late Friday evening. By the middle of the following day only about 250 tons of oil had been lost, five Milford Haven tugs had managed to free her from the rocks and there was an option to tow her further out to sea away from immediate danger. The imminence of a Force 9 gale made this a pressing necessity.

The pilot aboard the Sea Empress radioed the Port Authority’s Control Room to ask permission from the Harbour Master and received the following, now infamous reply: “I agree with you but I have a room full of men saying No.” They included men from the salvagers, the oil and insurance companies, the coastguard, and the Department of Transport Pollution Control Unit. Their collective and soon to be mistaken view was that the Sea Empress could be emptied of her cargo where she was and then towed to safety.

In the event the Force 9 gale duly arrived, the towlines connecting the tugs broke and the Sea Empress was thrown about the rocks for twelve hours, losing most of her cargo of crude in the process. As I say, lessons have been learnt from the decisions that led up to this disaster.

But in another respect thre lessons are being forgotten. In the wake of the disaster, emergency towing vessels with much greater capacity than those operating in the Haven, were put in place around the coast of the United Kingdom - at Dover, Orkney, Stornoway, and Falmouth, the last providing cover for the Welsh coast.

However, in 2011 the Conservative government scrapped this fleet, as a cost saving measure, although one tug in Orkney won a reprieve until March this year.  Questioned about this last week, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said, “The government believes that responsibility for ensuring the operational safety of ships is properly a matter for the commercial shipping industry, working in partnership with the tug and salvage industries. It does not believe that it is appropriate for the taxpayer to fund this provision."

Meanwhile, other European countries, including Spain, France, Norway and Germany are maintaining government financed emergency towing vessels. And, of course, since the Sea Empress disaster we have much larger vessels coming into Milford Haven, carrying liquefied natural gas, a much more unstable and dangerous cargo. We’ll just have to hope that this further example of the Conservative government’s ideologically-driven cost-cutting doesn’t end-up in a false economy of cataclysmic proportions.

Six wishes for 2016

 Trying to predict the future is a fool’s game but that doesn’t mean one can’t harbor aspirations. So with a nod in the direction of those who warn we should be careful what we wish for, the following are six of my hopes for 2016.

First is an earnest plea to Pembrokeshire County Council to adopt a New Year’s resolution that it will take on board the responses to its consultations. On my reckoning they held three during 2015 on the future of secondary schools in Haverfordwest. This was on the basis that if the first and second didn’t produce the answer they wanted, they should try, and try again. All the signs are that the third will deliver the same result as the other two - that parents, pupils and staff want a new English-medium secondary school complete with a sixth form. Hopefully the county council might listen this time.

Stephen Crabb - will we remember him when he's gone?

Secondly, I hope that during 2016 the Westminster Government will allow the £1b tidal energy lagoon in Swansea Bay to go ahead. To do so, they need to agree a subsidy to underpin the project that would last more than 30 years. The price is high but the potential gains are enormous. If the Swansea lagoon is successful it is likely that half-a-dozen more will be built around the Welsh coast, creating a reliable renewable energy supply and creating more than 30,000 jobs in the process. Many of these would be based around Milford Haven. It had been hoped that work could start on the project this spring but that has been delayed for a year while the UK government makes up its mind. The commitments it made at the Paris Climate Change conference coupled with the mounting evidence of the perils of global warming – the recent floods being the most recent – ought to be persuasive.

Thirdly, I hope that the Secretary of State for Wales, Preseli’s MP Stephen Crabb will decide that he wants to be more than a footnote in history.  He has a chance to make his mark if he decides to face down the opposition of Whitehall departments like the Home Office and put some backbone into the Wales Bill he will be steering through the Westminster Parliament.  As it stands the Bill only tinkers with the powers of the National Assembly.  It needs to do much more than that if it is to result in a stable and lasting settlement. Does Stephen Crabb wish to remembered? Or will he be just another in the list of forgotten holders of his office, like his predecessor for instance? Does anyone remember him?

Fourthly, I hope David Cameron comes back from his negotiations in Brussels in February with a package that he can use to make a persuasive case for the peoples of the UK to vote to stay inside the European Union. A vote to leave in the referendum that now looks likely in the summer would be disastrous for the Pembrokeshire economy.

Fifthly, I hope we vote in the Assembly elections in May to change the Government in Cardiff Bay. Labour have now been in power there for 16 years, far too long for the health of our fledgling Welsh democracy. A new Plaid-led government would also be our best hope for restoring essential emergency service to Withybush hospital.

Finally, perhaps my most optimistic wish: for a fair spring and a fine summer. Pembrokeshire’s farmers and our tourist industry could certainly do with both. Happy New Year!

Slurry threat to Blue Flag beaches

Pembrokeshire’s Blue Flag beaches, so important for the county’s image and tourist offer, are under threat from Welsh Government environmental regulations imposed at the behest of the European Union. How could such a situation have come about? You might well ask. Bear with me, for this is a complicated tale.

Every four years the Cleddau river catchment, which covers about 80 per cent of Pembrokeshire’s land area, is tested for nitrates that are largely caused by farm waste flowing into the water system. If they are too high they cause the growth of algae and other harmful organisms. In turn this upsets the fish and plant life that depend on the health of the waters in Milford Haven and the Marine Special Conservation Area beyond.

When the rivers were last tested in 2012 the nitrate levels almost reached the point where the Welsh Government would have been obliged to impose severe restrictions. As Ged Davies, Pembrokeshire Team Leader for Natural Resources Wales told me, “It was too close to call.”

If a Nitrates Vulnerable Zone had been declared it would have had a massive impact on the 1,800 farms that operate within the river catchment area. There would have been severe limits on the amount of muck spreading, a requirement for much greater winter slurry storage capacity, a clamp down on fertilizers, and strict record keeping of nitrate discharges.

It now looks inevitable that all this will be demanded following the latest measurement of nitrate levels. A report goes to the Welsh Government in October and it will make an announcement early next year with the likely imposition of a Nitrates Zone from the beginning of 2017.

If this happens farmers will be faced with a stark choice: to either reduce the livestock on their land and consequently their income, or increase the amount of land for muck spreading. Many will opt for the latter and look first to buying or renting land immediately adjacent to the Nitrates Zone. The problem is that much of this is next to the coast. As Ged Davies says, “The land outside the Nitrate Vulnerable Zone would likely be in the coastal fringe, in the National Park, and draining to bathing waters. This land would be available for unregulated and potential over applications of slurry. This could have the unforeseen effect of the Nitrates Directive adversely affecting the Bathing Water Directive.”

Hence the threat to EU designated Blue Flag beaches that is coming from EU environmental regulations. So what can be done? One option is for farmers to work with Natural Resources Wales on a voluntary basis to reduce their nitrate output. Ged Davies points to a successful scheme that has operated in recent years among farmers supplying the First Milk cheese processing plant at Merlins Bridge.

If initiatives of this kind could be undertaken across Pembrokeshire there is a chance we could avoid the imposition of a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone in 2017 and the unintended consequences that would be likely to follow for our Blue Flag beaches. But for that to happen there should be an injection of urgency with action taken now.