Headline: Water quality deteriorates in several Canterbury rivers
The Government and Environment Canterbury need to get serious about cleaning up our rivers by controlling polluting land uses, the Green Party said today.
The Ministry for Environment’s swimming suitability report shows the suitability for recreation grade got worse at monitored sites in the Ashburton River, Hurunui River, Lake Opuha, Waiau River, and Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere.
In the Hurunui the grading declined from fair to poor at SH1 in this year’s report.
“New schemes such as the proposed Hurunui water project and the conversion of Balmoral Forest to dairying risk severely increasing the pollution load on the Hurunui River making it even less suitable for swimming,” Green Party water spokesperson Eugenie Sage said.
“Kiwis heading down to their local swimming hole should not have to worry whether it is safe to swim or not.”
Canterbury also featured in the River Condition indicator report as having high concentrations of nitrate. Across New Zealand it is unsafe to swim at 61 per cent of monitored recreational sites on New Zealand rivers.
The report clearly links nitrate pollution with farming, “Higher concentrations generally occur on the lowland regions of the Canterbury Plains, Southland, Waikato, Hauraki Plains, Manawatu Plains and Taranaki. Most nitrate that enters our waterways is converted from ammonia (eg, in animal urine) by bacteria in soils.
The Canterbury Medical Officer of Health has previously issued warnings about the dangers of continually increasing nitrate levels saying, “high nitrate levels in private and small water supplies in the Ashburton area were putting newborn babies at risk.”
“We have a freshwater crisis. The National Government is only going to make it worse by subsidising large scale irrigation projects such as the Central Plains irrigation scheme. We need national rules which control agricultural intensification and protect streams from stock access,” said Ms Sage.
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