Rivers or drains?

In response to Lyn Webster’s November 6 Opinion column about water quality – I commend her honesty when she states, ‘‘I don’t think rivers were ever intended to be swum in by humans. It’s not what Mother Nature intended.’’ – and, ‘‘I think a river is more like a drain … something to collect and wash away detritus’’. I am compelled to be similarly honest, and state that in my considered opinion her piece is spectacularly nonsensical.

But what if she’s right? Earth’s biosphere does after all have three broad meta-habitats – ‘Terrestrial’ (land), ‘Marine’ (sea), and ‘Aquatic’ (fresh water). So perhaps we can afford to relegate one to waste-disposal?

But hang on, we’ve already developed most of earth’s useable land for ourselves. When farming began 10,000 years ago, 99.9% of Earth’s vertebrate biomass comprised wild animals, whereas now 96% of it consists of us and our domestic animals. That includes using waterways as ‘‘drains’’, thereby replacing rich aquatic ecosystems with (largely terrestrial) humans and their companions and livestock. So that’s ‘‘Terrestrial’’ already mostly overwhelmed by people, but hey, we’ve always got ‘‘Marine’’.

But hang on, greenhouse gas emissions are already acidifying the planet’s salt water (97.5% of our total water), with potentially disastrous effects on the small calcium-dependent animals that entire food chains leading up to whales and humans depend on. So that last meta-habitat might be buggered as well. Oh well, we might be OK for as long as the milk supply lasts. Perhaps we can move to Mars, if grass for Lyn’s cows grows OK there. But hang on, what if Mars has rivers? Sorry ‘‘drains’’ – get it right.

I believe that as part of the Treaty settlement for Whanganui iwi, their river has been granted legal ‘‘personhood’’ status. Oops sorry again – their ‘‘drain’’. All too much for me, I’ll think I’ll load my kayak on the roof-rack and go for a paddle on the Waikato Drain (there, got it right).

Chris Smuts-Kennedy

Cambridge