Estuary can’t wait for saviour
If Invercargill’s New River Estuary had a human metabolism it would be convulsing. It’s being simultaneously choked and poisoned by the nutrients we’re force-feeding it.
In less than two decades it’s gone from 1 per cent to 15 percent ‘‘grossly eutrophic’’ as macroalgae thrive, die and rot a dynamic that creates spiralling degradation.
That 15 per cent represents 428 hectares of horribleness, right there, and spreading like gangrene throughout the estuary.
An Environment South land commissioned report presents a scientific assessment so alarming that it’s difficult to read dispassionately.
Crucial thought long-term solutions may be, the potential extent of irreparable damage in the meantime means effectual short-term steps are also an imperative.
Labour List MP Liz Craig is among the organisers of a new environmental group formed late last year to save the estuary and she acknowledges that action should not await the outcome of the Government’s Three Waters review.
Quite right. Such is the rate of decline at the estuary that 2025, which is when Environment Southland chairman Nicol Horrell has reminded the council that nutrient limits are to be set in the Oreti catchment, is a long way off.
Not that Horrell was encouraging inertia in the meantime. Far from it. He was urging the council to accelerate its programme for improving sometimes shameful standard of civic discharges.
Which brings us to the issue of blame. Craig’s encouragement for parties not to descend into fruitless fingerpointing is understandable but at the same time we need to be clear that if either rural or urban Southlanders feel they’re on a high horse then they need to look behind themselves because its probably crapping into a river.
The estuary report says it flatly that most of the contaminants are most likely to have come from dairying.
So that is where the most consequential improvements must be sought.
However – and it’s not a token however – townies needn’t look smug. They face a pointy reckoning too.
They mightn’t be the primary problem but they are still a significant part of it. The standard of wastewater treatment needs to be better and the inadequacies of the stormwater city’s reticulation system have rightly attained notoriety from stormwater discharges contaminated by raw sewage.
And farmers have a point when they distinguish between the punitive hammering any of them can expect from being caught breaching the rules, and the lightness of touch applied by Environment Southland when the city is at fault.
Remember the council’s statement that it doesn’t regard contaminated discharges as acceptable but it can do only so much at one time and so occasional failures are inevitable. Good luck to any farmer taking that line.
The whole Oreti catchment, in fact the whole province, needs to get its act together and most people surely know it. This comes down to the painful matter of still greater investment where it’s needed – and that’s an area where science needs to provide the focus and political will needs to impel it.
And let’s be appropriately impatient should any parties indulge too ardently in whining ‘‘yes but what about . . .’’ arguments.
Keeping one another honest is okay, but endlessly-circling antagonisms tend to lead to inertia. Can’t have that.
The estuary report says it flatly that most of the contaminants are most likely to have come from dairying.