Downgrading water standards gives false hope
The comments from Nick Smith that appeared in The Press on Saturday, in an attempted justification of the fact that his Government has rewritten freshwater standards in order to make it look like they’re making progress on swimmable rivers, can be summarised in a sentence.
The Government took a standard that the Ministry of Health gives a ‘‘C’’ grade and gave it an ‘‘A’’.
Like a kid who has been wagging school and doesn’t want his parents to know, Smith crossed out the poor results he’d got and carefully forged the top mark to make it look like he’d been hard at work all this time.
An ‘‘A’’. He even wrote ‘‘excellent’’ next to this to really try to sell it.
I wish I were making this up. It is true. Even the bit about writing ‘‘excellent’’.
Of course, it’s not just Smith’s work. There is a whole team behind this.
Wait until April, when the Ministry for the Environment produces a glossy new report on the state of the country’s waterways based on these new swimming standards. You won’t believe it, and you shouldn’t.
We have seen Prime Minister Bill English claim the Government’s new freshwater policy is ‘‘ambitious’’, though he doesn’t appear sure how exactly. John Key resurfaced from his time in chlorinated Hawaiian pools to tell us that because National have been the long-term Government of New Zealand they’ve ‘‘got a sense of what you can do, and the pace you can do it at. And the cost of that’’.
Yes, what you can do is change the proportion of swimmable rivers from 38 per cent to 72 per cent. The pace you can do it at: overnight. The cost of that?
It could be very costly given that it is an election year.
Regardless, if the Government’s shambolic and reckless National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management is not overhauled, it is New Zealanders who will pay the highest price.
The NZ Rural General Practice Network (NZRGPN) chairperson, Sharon Hansen, has serious concerns about the compromise the Government is making to the health of rural communities particularly. She told NZ Doctor, in an interview following the announcement, that she has seen ‘‘patients coming in with rashes, vomiting and diarrohea after swimming in local rivers’’.
‘‘We have a huge issue with our water quality here [in South Canterbury]; the water quality has really deteriorated over the years.’’
Hansen stressed that the view of the NZRGPN, a body that represents medical professionals working in rural communities, is that the Government is compromising people’s health for economic growth.
‘‘Accepting second-rate water quality standards merely continues the behaviour of shortterm gains at the expense of our children’s futures and New Zealand’s sustainability.’’
Our own Government is slowly contaminating our freshwater supplies through a combination of neglect and thoughtless economic strategy.
Given recent stories shared on the ongoing and serious health issues of people in Havelock North in the months since a gastro outbreak hit the town, it was excrutiating to watch Smith on breakfast television talking about the Government’s new worse swimming standards using an analogy involving drinking water and the risk of getting sick.
The new swimming standards involve an E coli count of 540 per 100ml. Ministers doing their homework would know that New Zealand’s drinking water standards are less than 1 E coli per 100ml. It’s not only the level of faecal contamination of water that’s reckless. It’s the level of other contamiants the policy allows, like nitrogen and phosphorous that drive growth of algal blooms. It’s the fact that they still haven’t dealt with allocation of water, despite eight years of developing this document and Canterbury rivers going dry.
Smith was at pains to describe how safe the Hutt River is for swimming but failed to mention the cyanobacteria that has proliferated there. It has killed dogs and is toxic enough to kill people if they ingested it. But National’s ‘‘ambitious’’ new plan doesn’t cover this toxic algae in rivers despite the fact that over the past decade we’ve seen ‘‘an increase in [its] distribution and extent’’.
Where is the care here? Why is National so casually prepared to risk New Zealanders’ health?
Where is the vision for our future? New Zealand should be a country that measures its success by the health and wellbeing of our people and environment, and the resilence, diversity and sustainability of our industries.
Rather than being visionary, this policy drags New Zealand and New Zealanders down by lowering everyone’s expectations as to what is ‘‘acceptable’’ for this beautiful place.
How will we explain to visitors that places like Chamberlin’s Ford that has ‘‘all but withered into a puddle, filled with slime’’ is one of the 100 per cent pure rivers they were expecting and that it gets a pass for swimming, according to the Government?
We will fight this legislation. We will not let National use this country like an old car they run into the ground and as soon as it splutters and dies, they get out and walk away.
‘‘How will we explain to visitors that places like Chamberlin’s Ford that has ‘‘all but withered into a puddle, filled with slime’’ . . . gets a pass for swimming, according to the Government?’’ Marnie Prickett