‘‘Simplistic’’ to blame birdlife for water quality

DR Marc Schallenberg said ‘‘Where the level of a contaminant in a river or lake has been increasing, this can be seen as a failure by the Regional Council to safeguard water quality’’.

It was therefore encouraging to read the article (ODT, 22.1.19) by the chairman of the Otago Regional Council and to note that after over a decade of sitting on its hands, the ORC is at last ‘‘taking water quality and any threats to it very seriously’’.

Quite some time before the ORC decided that it needed to ‘‘protect water quality’’, most longtime residents of Central Otago had become increasingly concerned that the lakes and rivers that they were able to swim in and drink from 20 years ago were regularly unsafe for either purpose and that some rivers, like the Lindis, were ceasing to flow at the height of summer.

On recent occasions, your paper has reported dangerous levels of E. coli contamination in our lakes and rivers, and for the ORC to blame the recurring substandard state of the water quality in Queenstown Bay and the Frankton Arm on the seagulls and ducks seems a little simplistic and possibly disingenuous.

The larger contributions that don’t appear to have been acknowledged by the ORC are the huge increase in intensive agriculture in the driest region in New Zealand, with the consequent decrease in river flow rates and the water degradation that results from this, and the fact that the Central Otago area has the fastest growing population in New Zealand.

The region also currently hosts over 3 million visitors annually — including 17,000 to 18,000 ‘‘freedom defecators’’. Visitor numbers are predicted to increase to 5 million annually.

The QLDC’s recent accidental discharge of sewage into Lake Wakatipu and its previous 2017 conviction for leaking raw sewage into a waterway are symptomatic of a regional infrastructure under pressure. I don’t think the ORC should be blaming the ducks. Euan Baxter

Alexandra

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Lime scooters

I READ with interest the various comments regarding the growing use of escooters, and am intrigued. I must have missed something in my upbringing but doesn’t common sense come into the riding and operation of these devices, or is common sense out of fashion these days?

At the risk of upsetting some ‘‘well intentioned’’ writers, I must ask: Who on earth would ride one on a city street at 2am when the scooter is unlit?

The use or nonuse of a helmet is incidental. I feel for the poor truck driver who hasn’t been mentioned in any articles I have read.

Bob Farrell

Arrowtown

Climate change

MY vege garden is a mess.

Spuds are salvaged out of a virtual bog. I’ve lost two lots of brassicas, gone to seed. The weeds are having a hey day.

Why? Because we’ve had three times the average rainfall in a month.

The climate’s gone to the pack, thanks to the political fossil fuel oligarchs, oil cartels, corporate farmers and multinational coal miners.

And these outfits can put vast sums of money into spin doctoring — using selected statistical data to fool good, honest citizens into believing there is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change.

One day temperatures hit the 30degC mark. The next, we get snow warnings in the passes, or flood warnings.

Populist leaders such as US President Donald Trump have latched on to it. And our own sceptics and deniers appear to have been sucked in.

The whole lot should be shipped off to the Antarctic and given vital facts and figures by our researchers.

For the loss of my garden crops, I aim to sue for compensation. Yeah, right. Jim Childerstone

Hampden

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