Water flowing in right direction
After recently returning from a trip to Europe, I have been reflecting on how fortunate we are to live in such a wonderful country as Aotearoa, New Zealand. We enjoy minimal overcrowding, a temperate, reliable climate, a diversity of landscapes, and of course our normally plentiful and high quality water resources.
High quality water you may ask? Compared to most of the world we do have very good quality water. Environment Southland’s own data has Southland sitting at almost two-thirds of our rivers and streams having good swimmable water and 98 percent of our lakes.
To give some water quality history, one only has to delve back to 1950 when Southland’s dairy cow population reached about 430,000. Back then normal farming practice - and the evidence is still there in places - was to wash all the shed effluent into the nearest ditch, creek or river to dispose of it. The small dairy factories doted around the country disposed of their waste in similar fashion, as did meat processing and many other industries.
Thankfully, those practices have passed, but they did continue on for many years after that. So the people who have memories of swimming in pristine rivers 20, 30 or 40 years or more ago are somewhat deluded. The only thing we can be certain of is the level of contamination of waterways since testing on a large scale began about 20 years ago.
Prior to testing, on a hot day if the river looked reasonably clear people swam in it. We didn’t think of E coli or any other contaminants, and to the best of my knowledge I don’t remember anyone ever falling ill after swimming.
It was only in the very early1990s that regulations on containing and managing effluent came in as dairying started on a huge growth curve.
Today, dairy cow numbers for Southland sit somewhere around the 550,000 mark, with the biggest change being the intensity of those cows farmed.
This is where not only the dairy industry, but sheep and beef also have intensified and greatly increased per head production.
The dairy industry, I must say, has done an outstanding job of fencing waterways and doing its best to mitigate any adverse effects on the environment.
So to the present day where Federated Farmers are spending a huge amount of time on the current version of the Southland Water and Land Plan as the appeal process begins.
We have met with most other ‘‘Team Ag’’ appellants and have started meeting some of the other appellants who will challenge our position. We believe we have taken a very pragmatic view of the plan that will not only assist farming comply with environmental issues, but will include all others of the Southland community.
Of course farming is not the only industry that has an environmental imprint.
Most Southland towns and cities have a considerable challenge ahead of them to improve our water quality also.
So back to my opening comments, I believe we should not be negative when discussing our water quality in New Zealand, but indeed celebrate the great waters that we are blessed to have and what has been achieved so far.
There is still room for plenty of improvement especially in some of our lowland streams, but science tells us we have arrested the decline and in a lot of areas quality is trending up.
Whether we set the baseline for E coli levels at 1000, 500 or just a mere 50 for swimability is dependent on one’s viewpoint, but from my perspective, I would prefer any day to swim in water with a faint trace of organic contamination than industrial waste.