ECan declares nitrate emergency amid rising water pollution protests
Canterbury Regional Council, known as Environment Canterbury (ECan), has carried a motion to declare a nitrate emergency at its final meeting today.
The vote was nine for, seven against.
Some councillors and government ministers said the council calling the motion in the last meeting before local elections was grandstanding and a political stunt.
Dozens of protesters had gathered outside the building demanding action.
There is a beautiful karma is there not in Corporate Dairy Farmers polluting and poisoning their own rural whanau with nitrates?
The furious response by the corporate dairy Farmers shows you how deep Greenpeace’s campaign has cut…
…when your Twitter account reads like it’s being run by Sean Plunket, you aren’t winning!
What’s the Government’s response to this polluting of the water ways their farming communities are dependent upon?
Why more pollution of course…
The Green Party says the Government has handed companies “a free pass to pollute”, with a law change to make it easier to send waste down rivers.
Parliament voted on Thursday to approve the second phase of the Government’s Resource Management Act amendments.
At the 11th hour, just a few days before Parliament was set to debate the bill, Resource Management Minister Chris Bishop introduced an amendment to allow farmers to pollute streams and rivers to the extent that the water colour would change.
By giving councils the ability to approve pollution that would cause the “conspicuous change in the colour or visual clarity” of freshwater, Bishop went beyond his initial proposal to make some pollution a “permitted activity” that won’t require resource consents.
Once again our water gets polluted and shat in to appease the bloody Farmers!
The pollution created by intensive farming is leeching into the water and causing those communities to get sick and the refusal to do anything about that pollution means the consequences follow the next generation…
Greenpeace extends invitation to Gore District Mayor to work together on drinking water crisis
…watching those communities scream at environmentalists as they get sicker because the environmentalists are right would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
In totally unrelated news, Environment Canterbury has approved dairy conversions for over 15,000 additional cows in six months because no matter what the question is in NZ, the answer is always, ‘More cows’.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
Im all for a prosperous New Zealand, I’m all for more cows.
Silly Old Moo!
I think it’s a mistake to believe that “communities” exist in any meaningful form – by which I mean a form that is an effective restraint on selfish behaviour that might harm the common interest.
Market capitalism makes such a thing very difficult to even imagine, let alone implement. If daily economic life is structured as competition for survival, communities are formal entities rather than substantive ones.
So it’s no surprise that economic drivers mean most farmers are unconcerned about the downstream effects of their actions. What matters more to them, is whether the costs of fixing the problems they cause can be externalised onto current or future taxpayers.
This is not because farmers are bad people, but because the rules of the game make it economically rational to do what they do.
Farmers spoken today, our Federation Election care, a Party, eradication promise of other rogue trees and other pests, not human.
How about our water power reforms, what about, jist that, these reforms, in charge of born to rule Minister Watts, eh Bugsy, slouch in our Parliament like a old school, born to rule, Bugsy, behave.
“There is a beautiful karma is there not in Corporate Dairy Farmers polluting and poisoning their own rural whanau with nitrates?”
Sadly, the worst offenders are probably corporate owned farms, with the owners/shareholders being more likely to live in Remuera, than rural Canterbury.
Also there are plenty of people who live in rural areas who aren’t farmers but are dependent on private bores for their drinking water, and they deserve better.
It’s not as if many of us weren’t warning twenty five years ago of exactly these consequences.