Our differently abled rivers

‘‘swimmable’’ (meaning you can have fun in them).

Because the water quality’s improved? Not really, no. It’s more a reassessment of the existing situation.

Critics say this is a rebranded version of dirty. Which is a nice line.

The Government contends it’s both scientifically and socially justifiable, based on better data.

Even so, there’s no denying we’re now calibrating what’s acceptable off less-stringent examples among the international standards out there.

Environment Minister Nick Smith cannot be pleased that a new target to have 90 percent of our rivers and lakes swimmable by 2040 is being seen not as a worthy goal, but a reclassification swifty.

He’s battling the impression created by Initial reports were that the infection risk in these swimmable-after-all rivers is going to be 1 in 20.

No, he cries. That ratio applies only 15 per cent of the time. The vast majority of the time, the risk in those swimmable rivers is less than one-in-1000.

Even then, that’s not a risk people just have to suck up, so to speak, because the risk level, like rivers themselves, isn’t static.

People might feel a lot better about this if it they could be confident of a system adroit enough to give them fair warning when the risk level was up.

In some cases, like after heavy rains, it can be pretty obvious. Smith says says people in doubt should check the Land Air Water Aotearoa website.

You could fairly say that the river reclassifications are a political decision.

But much as we might be tempted to think so, ‘‘political’’ isn’t always a synonym for deceitful.

There’s been a strong message from the public that we want to be able to swim in our rivers. Though the main imperative must be cleaning them up, it’s not inherently an unjustifiable exercise for the Government to have looked at whether it’s sending the right messages to people about when it’s environmentally safe, or reasonably safe, to swim.

The question becomes, are these the right messages?

To answer that the next step, surely, must be to turn to a big ‘ol bunch of scientists.