Vet breaks glass ceiling, Young Farmer of the Year
Life as a resource management lawyer, with Derek McLachlan.
Derek grew up on a sheep and beef farm on the Clinton-Mataura back road. After working on dairy farms during his university holidays he became interested in freshwater management.
After his law degree at Otago University, Derek joined Gallaway Cook Allan, a little over four years ago, in their resource management division.
I sat down recently with Derek to find out what he does as a resource management lawyer, who his clients are and how to make sense of all the different environment plan changes that are coming out of the Otago Regional Council.
Otago Regional Council must upgrade their regional plan to bring it up to date, and this is happening piece by piece via these plan changes.
Derek talks a bit in the attached video about Plan Change 8 which came out recently. This dealt with effluent storage ponds, intensive grazing, and stock exclusion, amongst other things.
Since it was published a few weeks ago there have already been developments that impact this latest plan change from the Otago Regional Council. The culprit was the National Action Plan for Healthy Waterways which set the minimum standards for intensive grazing and stock exclusion nationally, which comes into force on 3 September 2020. Otago Regional Council wants to make sure that its Plan Change 8 is consistent with these new national freshwater standards so it will withdraw the sections on those topics from its Plan Change 8.
More information from the Otago Regional Council on their proposed Water Quality Plan Changes can be found here.
Confused? Listen to Derek in this interview below and all will be revealed...
Watch the video
Keep asking great questions …
