Well duh!
‘Sobering’ snapshot of NZ’s freshwater decline released
One expert says a new report on New Zealand’s declining freshwater quality is a “sobering snapshot” of how the country’s “economic and physical well-being” is being harmed without additional Government action.
The report, jointly authored by the Environment Ministry and Stats NZ, collates and outlines the latest data and research about the country’s water bodies.
Otago University environmental health researcher Tim Chambers said it was a “sobering snapshot” of the state of New Zealand’s freshwater ecosystems.
He said the report “clearly showed” that further action is “required to protect our freshwater for our physical and economic well-being”.
“An estimated 45% of our river length is not suitable for swimming due to bacterial contamination. In 2017, 1200 people got sick after reporting contact with recreational water.”
Chambers said bacterial contamination at tested sites was either getting worse or not getting better.
Of course 45% our rivers are poisoned!
A cow shits the same as 14 humans, we have 10 million cows, that’s the equivalent of 140million humans pissing and shitting into our rivers, but fuck that – MORE COWS!
Right wing climate deniers, Boomers who don’t like being told they’ve contributed in any way shape or form to the current climate catastrophes and those who profit from cow pollution will scream climate change is a socialist hoax and that’s why not one precious cow life will be culled ever because every calf is scared!
Cue Monty Python.
Won’t some one think of the Cows?
Sure John Key sold 49% of our Hydro Assets to create a $400million irrigation slush fund that was used to intensify dairy farming while polluting our water and generating climate changing gasses, but fuck that – MORE COWS!
We pay a price for NZ dairy and NZ meat that is set by an international market, so we are competing with the 100million others wanting that product but fuck that – MORE COWS!
The quisling corporate farmers claim they are generating jobs, yet they import cheap foreign labour to do those jobs, but hey – who cares? MORE COWS!
Farmers are 1.16% of the population, represent 5.5% of GDP, make 48% of greenhouse gas emissions and create 70% of NZ’s contribution to global warming yet they are able to run roughshod over any legislative reigning in because the have such enormous political and economic power!
SO! FUCKING! WHAT!
MORE!!!!!!!! COWS!!!!!!!!!!
As the reality of the climate change the polluter profiteers have denied was ever occurring in the first place starts to dawn, all focus now turns to adaptation rather than mitigation so we can have MORE COWS!
I propose that New Zealand urgently spends $1Trillion dollars into research and development so that golden Cows can float in the sky with massive golden flying paddocks so as to never be drowned by the floods their farts create!
Whatever the problem is silly sleepy hobbits, MORE COWS! is always the solution.
Cow Udder Alles!
Whatever the question is, the answer is always more cows.
Stay classy Aotearoa.
PS – don’t drink the tap water.
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Hey, great news! Our waterways are fucked, our tap water is soon to become toxic, but at least we stopped 3 waters…
Don’t fret. The just put a bit of lipstick on that pig and now pretend its a sow. It is still the same pig.
standalonecomplex, You far right punits must stay glued to TDB every post. Seems you clowns are always first off the block to spray your over opinionated BS as if its gospel
Stephen
We’ve had a Labour Government for 6 years what have they done about our water quality?
National destroyed it nine so it may take a while
Thing is Bob, PM Key rejected the science. In a BBC interview Key said our water was just fine. When the BBC chappie cited leading fresh water scientist Dr Mike Joy about the parlous state of our rivers, Key, rejected Joy, saying that scientists were like lawyers, and that he could easily rustle up another one to provide an opposing view. So things steadily went from bad to worse, because one strange man had priorities which did not include the common good. It’s not the only mess he left.
Key’s government took a similar attitude to class size in state schools – they eventually found an educationalist who endorsed their view that class size didn’t influence student learning.
Steve – that’s the answer – blame it all on some dozy lot and that solves the problem. Makes it disappear like magic. Reminds me of some Brit graffiti from the past that says similar about soccer –
‘Everton is Magic. Answer – Watch them disappear from the front ranks this season.’
Damn – someone has always done it before you. Think of some other way to handle the FACTS that we have bad water when once we had Good Water. And how then can these forin so and sos be still exporting water – have they tied up all the good supplies??? Or are we spreading disease from our not so pure 100% stuff?
Well said Stephen!!!!
Not good at all but neither is Labour’s solution, the horrendous bureaucratic mess of unelected unsackable taxmen and lets not forget Tuku, aka, 3 Waters!
The numbers around the economic contribution of farming are at best misleading.
However.
New Zealand is good at dairy. But it needs to get good at dairy without the pollution.
It’s terribly, terribly entitled to claim that exporting milk gives you the right to dpreay shit everywhere.
Bizarre to think people believe 3 waters is at fault and it hasn’t even been implemented yet.
Actually, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again thinking you will get a different result.
Labour offering a solution and Luxon promoting to Farmers yesterday to remember they are still the party for farmers, so he is part of the problem, not solution.
If only New Zealanders could find something else that the rest of the world wanted to buy from us, and we were willing to let a business do that! Then we could get rid of dirty dairy.
Something like unprocessed soft-wood logs. Or tourism, or mid level education….or heavily subsidised movie locations….
Or selling a relatively fixed supply of houses amongst ourselves, and boost demand by inwards migration to lift everyone’s house price? That could replace dirty dairy farms, wouldn’t it?
In reality, NZ is a poor country, and poor countries don’t get many good options
Or oil and gas. Works for Norway and Denmark. But hey….we must please the fucking Greenies.
Let’s cull the cows, now.
Cheap meat, less CO2 released to atmosphere, more opportunities to swim at lower risk of getting sick… win:win.
Why has Hipkins and Shaw not done just that?
Well one things for certain, we know Luxon won’t…not when he ponders to farmers and he won’t have enough support to form a government.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300851575/highly-unlikely-christopher-luxon-will-partner-with-te-pti-mori-or-socialist-greens
How do you come to that conclusion from that report?
Look I don’t think it’s wise to impose efficiency programmes on farmers. We can help some of the to find other work or businesses but not all. Our cities aren’t ready for another mass migration. We are going to have to be very careful with this one in order to accommodate larger populations.
Seriously Johan?!
The report tells us that Luxon can’t see how leftist parties will join into an election coalition with National.
He then says, what happens after the election is, as Winston always says, another story.
A really bizarre conclusion from Bert who is renowned for such.
Bizarre is Bob believing he is better than everyone else with his Dulwich upbringing. Research Dulwich school and you find lots of lewd history.
Bob is renowned for lewd comments.
And if that don’t work, what/who would you kill next?
More cows.
But wait. Now we will have some bs about us feeding 40 million people so it’s all ok. Apparently we are incredibly efficient at dairy farming. So this is what efficiency means? Leave everyone to pick up the tab. Reports of farms under reporting fertiliser use is probably linked to our so called efficiency
Yes, indeed.
That approach worked really well for Sri Lanka.
If we can find another Marsden Point to cull we may not need to cull that many cows.
There is significant evidence that we can manage our milk and beef industry more efficiently and there is evidence that this transition is happening. One can have your steak and a lower increase in anthropogenic caused atmospheric CO2.
I would rather drink water from a stream running through a farm than one running through town. A bit of cow shit never killed anyone.
Exactly! Cholera and Dysentery build character.
Exactly standalone and the added advantage gained from drinking cow shit is the added toes and fingers plus extra ear as a side affect so all good!
You’re full of it .
What about the nitrates? That “shit” will do a few things to you and none of it is positive
We do drink the water from the stream that goes though our farm. It tested up perfectly fine and cleaner than samples 3 and 4, both of which came out of a Auckland suburban tap. The same tap that dispenses water that causes Buteline failures after 10 or so years (the stuff plumbed into many many houses). The same tap that’s only 100m from beaches so covered in human shit even dogs are being told to stay off them.
Just saying
Martyn – New Zealand Government needs to start billing Fonterra/Westland Dairy/Synlait Dairy directly for clean up costs – instead of picking off individual farmers…
Not a bad idea Nathan
Wheel – Thank you..it seems fair
When you say “a bit,” Capt. Otorohanga, what unit of measurement are you using.
Is it your mark one eyeball?
Your thumb?
Science?
Even a reasonable guess will satisfy my curiosity 🙂
Directly ingesting cow shit is not recommended.
Well well well .. All media are lamenting water quality at the same time the govt is rebranding 3 Waters???
No I’m not skeptical of govt/media collusion at all…give me a break.
45% of monitored rivers, how many are monitored?
shhh………shhhhh. Don’t ask inconvenient questions, we are here to panic not to ask for information.
We could always blame Phil Goff for the cow failures, it worked for the flood failures.
In the case of Goff and floods it’s true.
Evidence Bob?
Oh that’s right it’s just a forum for your fucked up opinion.
Yes let’s not seek solutions it’s easier to groan and moan.
The left enjoy moaning, they dislike being happy.
You delusional fool, you moan on this site endlessly about everything. Has nursey changed your diaper today?
Bahahahahaha Bob moaning about others moaning.
Bahahahahaha!!!
In the words of Maxwell Smart.
“And loving it.”
Gosh you are reactionary enough for me RB. Very good effort, or is it second nature to you?
7.
Paul
7.
You do realize most of those poisoned rivers flow through our towns and cities don’t you? This is as much an urban issue as a rural issue although the state of the Gulf and the waterways that feed into it is ignored by the environmental left because it doesn’t fit their narrative.
What utter bollocks. Pointing out major sources of nitrates, which federated farmers acknowledge as an issue, is not giving free license to other sectors to ruin rivers.
Bullshit. Explain how upstream from Hamilton is polluted? So is it Cambridges fault that the water is undrinkable and damn near poisonous to swim in?
And where do you think those rivers start and flow through before they get to our towns and cities?
( Cough-cough…)
Dairying isn’t farming you dip shits. It’s cowsploitation and it’s you dreary townies who are the ones too ignorant to comprehend the difference. There are other townies, however, who are more cunning than you urban dopes who are yourselves being ‘farmed’. The millionaire and billionaire freaks who make scary money from ramping up costs to force farmers to adopt unsafe farming practices are living right next door to the morons who wail ” It’s farmers what are doing it! !! !”
The national party and its riche urban elite, read arse holes, has been exploiting farmers for generations and if you look around at your shit urban lifestyles and uncertain futures then you just might have enough brain power left from listening to RNZ and watching thu nues on tha tee vee to understand that you too are being exploited.
At the core of all this madness are the banks and they’re foreign owned but wait, there’s more. They don’t give a fuck what you think. Here’s what you can all do. Kiss your arses goodbye because you lose, they win.
Perhaps there needs to be a handshake fraternity of family farmers and those who actually either live on the farms or near them, perhaps Swiss style, and who adopt the practices that good farmers would do. What about it? Federated Farmers is long past its use-by date for serving NZ farmers who aim to operate individually as part of a co-operative effort.
It’s time for FF to go Ozymandias and today’s farmers need to have some European cultural history to mix in with science and then can accept what Matauranga Maori means to the indigenous people. Their tupunas’ ideas be honoured, even if in ritual acceptance to remember and carry them forward. There is a way to get beyond this snarling about it.
The problem is to make change against concreted approaches, often an OTT onslaught is needed to achieve, just, recognition.
all I can say is when I came to NZ I was blown away by kiwis stories of a childhood/adulthood swimming in any river they fancied back home we only had the cut(canal full of industrial pollution) and the local baths to swim in, NZ in that respect was pretty much paradise in my eyes…..but we’ve managed to fuck that right up
Yes Gagarin. The Canterbury I grew up in abounded in rivers which we picnicked alongside all day, in and out of the water, in a totally carefree way.
School and church groups enjoyed excursions by train, with packed lunches and hampers, to rivers which quenched the thirst and provided refreshing solace during the scorching dry norwesters. The Canterbury Plains were covered with carpets of golden grain. Venturing further from Christchurch, we entered sheep country, which grew the wool which enriched the country, and provided the Sunday roasts which ordinary everyday families could enjoy back then, but are a dreamtime now when even the milk from today’s cows costs more than many New Zealanders can afford, and children’s teeth rot drinking cans and plastic bottles full supermarket rubbish.
” PS – don’t drink the tap water.
Key , Fonterra management and the good people in the agriculture and MFAT ministries and all the other wealthy miscreants don’t swim in rivers or at public beaches cause they are untreated sewage farms.
Just another example of an industry expected to provide demand for these negotiated trade agreements without any plan or competency of how to increase more animals but don’t have a system that can treat the waste or provide a use for it.
Lazy inept governments and polluting mega industrialised corporates like Fonterra and Synlait are only focused on the return profit and to hell with the environment of innocent peoples health.
No responsibility , no accountability in this land that is marketed as 100% clean and green and the brown rivers and coastline are a trick of the light.
NZ cattle herd in 2011 was higher than in 2017 and is now higher than in 2011.
Facts are easy to find if one cares.
Good image. It’s all blokes trying to squeeze the last drop of semen from the golden bull. The only female there bears her breast to her Male child. We can see where our problems lie can’t we! It’s that the wealthy tend to lie, and that’s why we have to keep females poor and pregnant as otherwise they will also catch the Midas disease.
Don’t you think we are in a pig’s muddle? And they are supposed to keep clean habits similar to our midden system of the 18th and earlier centuries. We have advanced a bit; though one wonders. Let’s find a good group of yeomen with that peasant* instinct of not trusting anyone and ruminating before we act and bob’s your uncle.
* Peasant: a poor smallholder or agricultural labourer of low social status (chiefly in historical use or with reference to subsistence farming in poorer countries).
“peasants left the farms to work in industry”
Time to reconsider our peasant roots if we still have any roots, now that industry is diminishing and the rich are a bunch of Twisted Sisters and oddball males and hangers-on.
Hobbits look like good people in the present light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xmckWVPRaI – We’re Not Goin to Take It
and The Price with lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKLOK7TqduI
And up to date we are: – After Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider officially approved of Ukrainians using the band’s 1984 hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as their rallying cry, he quickly received backlash for blaming Russia and its people, not Russian leader Vladimir Putin, for the invasion of Ukraine.27/02/2022
Where’s our hobbit house I think it’s time to step off the carousel. Copying the look of beehives doesn’t mean that we get their industry and mateship.
The NZ cattle herd was higher in 2011 than in 2017 and is now higher than in 2011.
Facts are easy to find it one cares to look.
This is pollution, this is not climate change. If you wish to battle climate change, you need to create (or join) a movement that seeks to replace (or better regulate) the ever expanding capitalist economic system.
It is telling, extremely effin telling that the capitalist system is not part of any climate change agenda. it is equally telling that we, the people cop the lions share of blame for climate change.
Put two and two together and it makes you wonder, it really does….
Then again we have the ETS. That is as capitalist as it gets.
It was paradise by the white gold meant people quickly converted and now we have appalling rivers everywhere but especially in the Waikato and Canterbury.
Politicians just don’t really care, the only person who has done anything is David Parker who was trying to see that the two main fertiliser companies had to keep a record of when and how much and to who they sold their super phosphate. It was a bloody good start and would have reduced the use of phosphate by 30% of farmers.
The local regional councils are to monitor this. But at the moment they prefer the ‘education’ approach and they may start to charge farmers in 3 years… Jesus Christ farmers know this and they bloody well know they can get away with it.
Cows always get the headlines on this site. They cause a lot of the problems, agreed, but no body even mentions the high rates of fertilisation of all the crops. Wheat barely maize. All the grain and veges on your plate add nitrates to our water ways and get a free pass because they are supposedly environmentally friendly. BS. Cow’s shit nitrates and so do crops, market gardens and your own garden at home. I won’t even go into building waste and sewerage when it comes to polluting water ways. Why is it always the cows that get in the news. An easy target that suits the fashionable narrative. Never a balanced argument here.
Correct New view.
The left have always disliked farmers.
Fuck up bob
It would help if your argument contained less contempt.
And going back to the stone age like some aesthetic pleasing lefties want is even more contemptuous.
One of the things I find peculiar is why some people find farmers antagonistic to the earth.
If humans are living creatures which I think we are. And some how humans are no longer apart from the biosphere which we aren’t. Now somehow we no longer have to eat red meat?
It’s a grave assumption to presume that before Europeans arrived in Aotearoa that somehow papatuanuku (the earth) was somehow free of the scares if human interaction is equally preposterous.
I mean maori were incredibly sophisticated agriculturalists and Pa (villages) and earthworks was incredibly sophisticated they could withstand sustained canon fire.
The idea that there was some how this pristine state of nature was around before modern farming got here and there is a kind of hatred here.
What the left have to come to terms with here is okay we want to end poverty and we want to do something about climate change.
We on the left are pursuing these really expensive energy policies while at the same time hypothetically dooming the poor to these much more truncated horizon of opportunities and starvation in many cases and as a consequence agriculture has become much more efficient not less.
The UK with 80 million people has two million cows and produces over a billion litres of milk. I think if we can use Chinese milk powder as a geopolitical tool so government subsidies /tax breaks or whatever if milk solids, grow the military, and double the overall output of the national energy grid for modern productivity reasons we can shrink herd sizes down from 400 to 200. “If.”
Gosh.
As a life long router, observer of rivers whilst up to my waste in water there’s a bit missing in the debate about cows. It is balance sheet alternatives to cows. Sheep don’t pollute waterways but there’s no money.
More concerning is carbon credit tree farming which dries and acidifies watercourses, followed by massive sedimentation. The green urban types love it, but I see it as a disaster for environment, economy and taxpayer. Its as big a problem as cows.