By John Hart*
425,000 kilometres of river meander and roar through New Zealand.
They’re our country’s lifeblood - recreationally, spiritually, economically.
Being able to head down to your local river and jump in without getting sick was once a given for generations of Kiwis. For many this is no longer doable.
Water quality has deteriorated to a point where 61 percent of our monitored recreational river swimming sites are unsafe to swim in.
The Greens think all our rivers can and should be swimmable. And last month we launched a plan to achieve this.
Writing on this site, Federated Farmers' Ian Mackenzie attacked the plan as “disingenuous”.
There were holes in his analysis which I’ll go into shortly. But first, the parts we agree on.
The recently introduced National Policy Statement (NPS) for freshwater establishes, for the first time, a framework to improve freshwater management in New Zealand. The existence of an NPS is a good thing.
Where we part company with the Government and Federated Farmers is the setting of minimum standards for water quality under it.
The National Government has chosen “secondary human contact” as its standard.
This means water clean enough to boat or wade in, but not clean enough to dive in, swim in or stick your head under.
Do anything other than boat or wade and there’s a high chance you’ll get sick. This bar is way too low.
Kiwis expect to be able to swim, fish and gather food in rivers and streams close to where they live. This is our birthright.
The current rules will allow some New Zealand rivers to have as much nitrogen pollution in them as the Yangtze River in China. Next thing you know we’ll be welcoming tourists to 100% Pure New Zealand, but warning them to “please stay in the boat”.
I’m lucky enough to farm in the beautiful Wairarapa. Like many of our neighbours, we raise sheep and beef. A stream winds its way through our valley, providing water for stock and drinking water for several families.
We swim in our swimming hole in the summer, and collect watercress for the table.
Most farmers in my community are aghast at the idea of local water quality slumping to the levels allowed under the NPS. We’re not “blaming” farmers, as Mr Mackenzie says; I know too many who’re making quantum leaps in environmental stewardship, with riparian fencing to keep stock out of streams and more careful use of fertiliser and irrigation water.
But there is no denying intensive dairy is the driving force behind the deterioration in our rivers.
New Zealand has half a million more dairy cows than in 2008, when National was first elected. One dairy cow produces 14 times more waste than a human, so those additional 500,000 cows is the same as seven million people doing their thing directly onto our rural land.
Even with best practice, the large-scale conversion of more land to dairy farming will further degrade freshwater. Because we’ve hit our ecological limits.
We can’t have clean rivers and more big dairy. The two just aren’t compatible.
Despite that, National pushes on with its blind plan for rampant dairy expansion. So much so that Environment Minister Nick Smith has been bullying environmental groups because their approach to saving our rivers isn’t pro-industry enough for him.
The Green Party will overhaul and strengthen National's weak national policies and bottom lines for freshwater management.
We will establish a protected rivers network to permanently safeguard our most precious rivers, like we have with our national parks.
Yes, our plan will cost money. But we’d rather invest money now to reduce the amount of nutrients, sediments and faecal contamination entering our rivers in the first place, rather than hundreds of millions dollars cleaning up the mess after the fact.
We think it’s better to encourage smarter farming within agreed environmental limits, which will stand both our farmers and rivers in good stead in the future.
Yes, there are already precious New Zealand rivers for which a clean-up programme is the only way forward. Again, we believe this is an investment worth making.
The alternative - accepting the status quo and allowing more rivers and streams to become too polluted to swim in without getting sick, is not the New Zealand I want my daughter growing up in.
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John Hart is the Green Party candidate for Wairarapa
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