Auckland a long-drop after a deluge

photographer John Hawkins was at The Barracks sports training facility in Invercargill to catch Will Ospreay, left, fighting local Southern Pro Wrestling hero Josh Curran.

If you go down to the beach today, you could get a big surprise. An icky, whiffy, poo-ey surprise, that is.

It’s been raining cats and dogs in many parts of the country lately and in my neck of the woods what that’s resulted in is untreated poos and wees – and who knows what else – apparently gushing into the sea.

Sixty of the Auckland region’s 84 beaches had a red alert this week, meaning there was a ‘‘moderate to high risk of infection’’ from swimming there. Because nothing screams summer more than fish and chips on the beach followed by a quick dip in faeces-infested waters, right?

I thought perhaps this was a one-off, but I was wrong. There are longterm ‘‘don’t swim’’ alerts at no fewer than 16 spots around the region. There’s a Facebook page set up to protest these constant sewage overflows, complete with lovely videos of tampons floating in waterways. Oh, and last month the largest government body outside Parliament asked (itself, essentially) for resource consent to continue, for the next 35 years, basically flushing the loo straight into our waterways every time it rains. Which in Auckland, it seems, is at least every other day.

I know what you’re thinking. The rest of the country already thinks Aucklanders are full of s..., now their own backyard is testament to the matter.

I guess those who compiled the survey that ranked Auckland as the third-best city in the world for quality of life didn’t visit after a downpour.

It strikes me as rather unfair that while we’ve been up in arms over where the country’s burgeoning cow population does its business, our burgeoning human population has been fouling up the waterways with what comes out of our own backsides. We can’t berate dairy farmers for dirtying the rivers if we’re content for our biggest city to keep using its waterways as one giant long drop.

While there’s no doubt farm run-off is a major issue and it shouldn’t be an either/or argument, Auckland’s pesky poo problem does give rural folk cause to point the finger back at city slickers.

Auckland’s mayor wants locals to pay a special levy to upgrade the system so this happens less often (but sadly not never). While some might squeal at the prospect of parting with yet more money in a city that’s already hellishly expensive to live in, it’s a comparatively paltry sum per week. Surely, if you give a crap about the environment, you can’t abide our crap being flushed into it. So, put your hands in your pants pockets, Aucklanders, or pull up your pants and forfeit the right to poo there.

How did they miscalculate so badly, all those people with all those MBAs and all that experience in banking and accounting?

The rest of the country already thinks Aucklanders are full of s..., now their own backyard is testament to the matter.