The Manawatu River Opportunity

State of NZ Rivers 

NZ is catching up with the likes of the UK, where lots of its rivers and waterways have been polluted for years. If it weren't for our small population our waterways would have been badly polluted years ago. Our green image is rapidly vanishing.

The various councils that have these rivers in their jurisdiction for some reason dont want to enforce their rules on water polluters, slap on the wrist with wet bus tickets come to mind, any polluters should be made to pay for the cost to rectify their action, making them bankrupt in the process if need be, at least that will make them think twice.

Re: State of NZ Rivers 

"NZ is catching up with the likes of the UK"
You may find that the UK has been going the other way for years. European environmental legislation is one of the most stringent anywhere in the world. In terms of levels of pollution, rivers such as the Thames (London)and the Mersey (Liverpool and Manchester) are shadows of their former selves.

"If it weren't for our small population our waterways would have been badly polluted years ago."
I'm not so sure, I think a lot of the things that are not particularly impressive about here can actually be put down to the small population. If the population was greater then we would be able to afford to invest in decent infrastructure and spread the cost more thinly. As an example, here - the 3 Wairarapa councils transport the areas rubbish up to a landfill in Manawatu. The gate fee at masterton is $120/tonne where as at BonnyGlen (ironic name for a landfill eh?) it is about half this. The problem is the 40,000 people in an area half the size of Belgium cannot afford the millions of dollars price tag for building a new landfill to the latest environmental standards.

"Our green image is rapidly vanishing." I'm not sure by whom or why this myth is perpetuated. Is it for the home market, so that we can pretend that the various crap we pour into our rivers, drop into the forests or spread over the farmland is OK? Is is the tourist department so they can hoodwink the tourists to keep earning the overseas currency? Immigrants and returning kiwis I'm sure see straight through this scam quite quickly.

I agree the polluters should pay more for their actions, but how this can be done, without the cost being simply passed back to you and I, is beyond me

Pete

Re: State of NZ Rivers 

Unfortunately I am missing the details of the pollution. Has anybody information about who and what is polluting the river?

Problem with legislation is that is usually follows general public trends. In very few cases you will find the government thinking ahead and committing to environmental protection. Most politicians are opportunistic and rather protect the economy.
Unless the public strongly wants changes, legislation will usually do nothing. They go with the flow.

So as long people dumping rubbish off their boats or trucks, draining down paint and chemicals, burning rubbish and CCA timber, doing burnouts with they garage-built racecars on public roads, demanding their free plastic bags - as long will it take to get things right.

We need a change in education and mindset foremost.
The is a nice thread on CELSIAS in regards to education and legislation.

The is also a nice movie from Media7 posted on there about the "clean green NZ image (100% pure)".
That was marketed since 1999 because the NZ tourist industry was in deep trouble.
The celebration website is at http://10yearsyoung.tourismnewzealand.com/

Celsias NZ is currently down, I will post the links later.

Regards,
Ingo

Re: State of NZ Rivers 

Hello Ingo,

The Waitara, Whanganui, Waipa, Rangitkei and Manawatu rivers rate as the worst polluted rivers in NZ. In 2009, the Cawthron Institute tested oxygen levels in 300 rivers and streams around the Western world and the worse levels recorded were in the Manawatu River.
The Manawatu river rivalled the worst rivers in China. So how did this come about?

There have been too many approved discharge permits issued for Local authority’s sewerage, industry and (predominantly) dairy farmers to discharge treated effluent into this river, and many do not comply with or fully meet their obligations. This may be because the Local Authorities have control rather than having a National Standard set by central Government, but then the Local Authorities would argue that they are closest to the problem and so are more effective in control.
I tend to agree.

The dairy farmers are the main culprits and back in the 1990’s the uncontrolled direct river high nutrient discharges were in the 100’s but this has substantially improved to only 7 today as the cow urine effluent has changed to being spread on land rather than direct discharge into the river.
The nitrogen can now be absorbed into the soil to generate grass growth instead of algae growth in the river, so why has there been so little overall improvement seeing the stock numbers at about 2.7 have remained constant from 1990 to 2009.

The farms with good soil absorption have been able to retain their effluent in the land, but those with poorer absorption have picked up the nitrogen from fertilizer as well as urine and not been able to stop the leaching back into the river.
Improving discharge techniques by moving discharge areas further back from the currently required 20m, planting trees on the river banks, and moving the stock off the farm to winter in the Hawke’s bay are all options that will help as the winter rain washes the stored nitrogen off the land into the river.

Though topography and soil type, some farmers may not be able to meet the increasingly tough standards now being imposed, and may well have to reduce their stocking intensity or even change their land use away from dairy due to the cost of mitigation – we will wait and see.

The local communities are now setting standards to turn this high nutrient load ‘green slimy’ river back to the time when it used to hold good fish stocks (there are very few fish there now) and to be swimmable.

The problem is understood and the solutions are being put into action as ‘sustainability’ is now a more important standard being set by the community.
NZ is slowly cleaning up its act.

Rex

Re: State of NZ Rivers 

Good post Rex,

I disagree with you slightly that the councils are best to deal with the problem. There first duty is to the ratepayers not the environment, if collecting fees for consent and not monitoring/enforcing the discharge results in a +ve financial on the books then they'll go that way every time.
Its better to have a national body who's overriding mandate is to look after the water quality, regardless of the who, what & where's.
Also many rivers flow through multiple authority territories, so it makes a mockery of it if one council is strict while upstream anything goes!

The UK have the Environment Agency who do this role. In 2008 the EA prosecuted 176 companies and 209 individuals, who were fined a total £2m.

Pete

Re: State of NZ Rivers 

Hello Pete,

I am not so sure. As a freewheeling entrepreneur I tend to favour less Government in my life rather than more, but I am first to recognize that most entrepreneurs look first for the profit rather than to protect the environment.

I would hate to see NZ going down the excessively regulated path of the EU (did you know that all Italian schools are now required to remove any symbol of Christianity such as the Cross? Good luck to enforcing that one), and I hope we now have sufficient checks and balances to lift the standard of our river water quality.

Remember that the Central Government overriding control is the Resource Management Act, and each Local Authority has to produce a District Scheme meeting water quality standards, advertise, and receive submissions from their community, local Iwi, Forest & Bird, Fish & Game Etc.
There is a lot more uniformity and control than back in the good old Wild West days, but we still have a long way to go.
We are currently only achieving a 50% pass rate.

Now we should not forget the part Fonterra plays – on one hand they are looking for a compounding 4% growth per annum therefore greater intensification, but are gradually accepting that they must protect our waterways.
Lately, Fonterra has been forcing recalcitrant farmers to clean up their act or Fonterra will not collect their milk.

Prosecutions are now common place whereas two years ago they were only against the very worst offenders.
Here’s hoping we can get there using more of the carrot rather than the stick approach.

Rex

http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/files/file/Dairying_and_Declining_Water_Quality(5).pdf

Re: State of NZ Rivers 

Link did not transfer correctly - go there and find sub link 'clean streams accord'

Rex

Re: State of NZ Rivers 

Carrot - absolutely - always the best way to go.

Crucifixes - not an EU mandate - local issue. BTW the swiss have just banned minarets - good on them. As an active Christian I support the latter but not the former (if your offended by Christian views - tough tits I am what I am)

I would hate to see NZ go excessive in regulation too, but I think there is a difference between excessive and uniform. From my "only been here 5 years" point of view I think that NZ's de- centralization has many pluses, but it also has its detriments too. I don't know about the wild west days possibly before my time here, but are there not too many fingers in such a small pie? Not a slight or a winge but remember, to me as an immigrant the whole of NZ is of similar proportion to a middle ranking European city, sometimes I have difficulty getting my head around this. That's why many NZ ways seem strange to me (forgive me I, still a raw recruit - so to speak). I did work for the local council here when I first arrived and from that experience I am none too certain of local authorities abilities to get the job done properly.

Its good to hear that companies such as Fonterra (and Tesco - my other post earlier) are starting to face up to their responsibilities, this should be encouraged.

ramble over !!

Pete