A clean green effluent system has won the newly created Environmental Award at the 2009 Fieldays Innovation Awards.

The new category was added this year to recognise the 2009 Fieldays Premier feature, ‘My Land, Our Environment'.
The system, designed by former Southland dairy farmer Lindsay Lewis, enables farmers to use their stock effluent to fertilise paddocks without causing pollution to waterways.
Spreading the effluent evenly and preventing paddocks from becoming saturated is achieved by a system of water pressure and timers that stop the flow from one paddock and direct it to another at the optimum time.
Lindsay developed the system primarily with dairy farmers in mind and a prototype has already been taken up by Environment Southland.
He hopes it will help farmers to significantly reduce the impact of their activities on the land.