The problem with swimming in NZ
Councils look unlikely to meet standards set by the previous government, let alone new stricter expectations. National correspondent
New Zealand’s unswimmable rivers, by length, would span around 14,000km end to end. It is roughly the distance between Auckland and New York; If Michael Phelps was swimming at max speed, 24 hours a day, it would take him two months to traverse our polluted rivers.
The scale of restoring those rivers is enormous, and the task has largely been left to local authorities. We now know they will struggle, with the bill likely to be in the billions of dollars to get just a part of the way there.
When the former government announced a nationwide swimmability standard early last year, the backlash was immediate. The standard, based on E coli levels over time, was described as confusing, even by the country’s top freshwater scientists.
Its focus on E coli, just one measure of water quality, would leave out rivers polluted in other ways – those without enough water to swim in, or those with frequent toxic algal blooms, a growing problem in some areas.
The criticism clearly stung and, after a public consultation period, a couple more national measures were added. But the hallmark of the policy stayed the same: Nationally, 80 per cent of large rivers should meet the new standard by 2030, increasing to 90 per cent by 2040. It would be up to councils to declare how they would contribute to that.
That moment came last week, when all regional authorities were required to announce their draft targets for 2030, ahead of adopting formal targets at the end of the year.
Most of their draft targets were lifted from a Niwa report, released around the same time, which aimed to help councils know how far they’d get with the work they’d already approved. It is not a roadmap, the Ministry for the Environment says, but a starting point to show how councils were doing.
It showed that based on all the work in the pipeline, we’d get about one-third of the way to the 90 per cent target: By 2030, 76 per cent of rivers would be swimmable, up from about 69 per cent now, with no projection beyond that. That work, an economic analysis showed, would cost about $217m per year, and some councils are already resiling at the cost; the numbers, as the analysis notes, are conservative.
It’s a problem because the new Government has been clear that the standards set by its predecessor were not acceptable, and will become stricter. It is gathering information now for a national policy statement, which is understood to likely include stricter controls around sediment, phosphorus and other contaminants.
What councils are doing now will fall well short of the old standards, let alone the new ones. The community expectation for freshwater, made clear through the election, will come at an extraordinary cost. That cost will not be even, either. Some councils are carrying more of the load than others.
According to these forecasts, Canterbury bears 15 per cent of the costs (about $32m), the second largest share for any region behind Auckland at 40 per cent
($87m). Waikato comes in third at
9 per cent ($19.5m). Northland has the worst water quality by river length in the country, but based on its planned work, it would increase swimmability by just 2 per cent by 2030, from 23.6 per cent swimmable to 25.6 per cent.
The report estimated it would cost Northland about $5m per year for 25 years. The Northland Regional Council disagreed and said it would be double that, because far fewer of its rivers were fenced than what was assumed in the modelling. That would mean it would cost $250m to improve thaty region’s rivers by a small percentage over time.
It’s not the only region casting doubt about the process, either.
Based on the modelling, two regions in particular promise to be superstars – Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay are each projected to each increase their swimmable rivers by about 26 per cent, far more than any other region, based on work already planned. The two regions would carry
The community expectation for freshwater, made clear through the election, will come at an extraordinary cost.
much of the weight nationally.
The problem is that the Taranaki Regional Council, which is doing that work, thinks those numbers are way off. Its own projections showed a swimmability increase of closer to 16 per cent than 26 per cent, and the council had harsh words for the exercise as a whole.
‘‘The [Niwa report] makes it clear that councils are spending far more than had been proposed as necessary by MfE [Ministry for the Environment] when the swimmability provisions of the NPS [National Policy Statement] were promulgated, but with far less improvement in swimmability than MfE had proposed would be the case,’’ it said.
The projections were ‘‘overly optimistic’’ and the council ‘‘believes a fundamental review of the modelling work is required’’.
In Hawke’s Bay, the other highperforming region, there was less concern about the modelling, but its plans are ambitious. Rates are proposed to go up 19 per cent next year, much of which would fund environmental work. The cost of improving the region’s rivers alone is more than $10m per year, but does not account for work to improve its polluted lakes, which have to meet the same nationwide standards as rivers.
It’s worth remembering the standards only apply to a small minority of rivers, those of a fourth order or higher. Rivers of that size account for about 10 per cent of waterways, leaving many small streams, which are a major contributor to water pollution, subject to local rules outside the national bottom line for E coli. (The counter argument is that because small streams flow into the larger rivers, they will need to be improved too).
While the work to reduce E coli levels will improve other waterquality measures too, different contaminants have different solutions; fencing is good for stopping E coli, but does little for nitrogen, which is a major issue in some regions, particularly in lowland Canterbury.
None of it addresses water quantity, which is an enormous issue in itself.
In their defence, some of the councils say their draft targets are not what they aspire to, and there are sure to be changes once formal targets are required by the end of the year.
It does, however, show how difficult meeting the community’s water-quality aspirations will be: It is likely to be extraordinarily expensive, and require tough decisions.
Water quality was a major issue during the election, but it was one covered in broad strokes. At a policy level, the issues are much thornier than many would have been expected.
Based on the work under way, our polluted rivers end to end will only reach Las Vegas by 2030, at a cost of billions of dollars; Michael Phelps would swim them in 46 days. Anything more than that will be harder than many could have imagined.