The National Policy Statement for Freshwater (NPS) may not have razzmatazz, but arose from that exercise in consensual collaboration called the Land and Water Forum [LAWF]. It was the first time industry, councils, government departments and groups such as Federated Farmers and Fish & Game have sat down to openly address water issues and find solutions.
At the heart of the NPS are regional councils, assigned to maintain and improve water quality and to raise the lowest water quality to a national minimum standard. With few exceptions this policy applies to all water bodies whether in town or country. This was an essential part of the LAWF consensus and the government chose secondary human contact as the national minimum standard. All New Zealand’s top water scientists were involved.
The Green Party claims it advocates for the environment and it should welcome this important legislation, whose intent is to keep New Zealand’s fresh water the best in the world.
The Greens often claim 60% of our water is unsafe, but many sites are affected by urban runoff. Now it wants to make all water bodies swimmable. This is disingenuous because of the sheer difficulty and cost of achieving it.
New Zealand has 425,000km of waterways which would have to meet those swimming standards, 24 hours daily, 365 days yearly.
The LAWF website states, “rivers and streams in (or downstream of) urban areas tend to have the poorest water quality (the highest concentrations of nutrients and bacteria, and lowest macroinvertebrate community index [MCI] scores).” This is because all our urban stormwater systems are designed to use urban streams and rivers to take away all this run-off. Trying to apply that standard to all freshwater bodies is a nonsense. And this is where the Green Party is disingenuous.
When the Green Party says “all water bodies” it really means only those in the countryside because they do not wish to alarm their core urban constituency. The Green Party ignores the huge shift in farmers’ attitudes towards environmental stewardship and underplays quantum leaps in management and mitigation of farm nutrients, the fencing of waterways, riparian planting, the strategic application of fertilisers and nutrient budgeting and the effects these are having on improving water quality. Instead the Green Party continues to blame farmers.
Farmers like me acknowledge we need to do a lot more work and the vast majority of us are adopting practices and spending tens of millions of dollars a year which, given time, will sort out our contribution. But we are not the sole cause or the sole solution.
The NPS may not have the sexy, but implausible, sound bite, ‘swimmable for all,’ but it gives that choice to the community to decide. It is practical, pragmatic and is the law.
• Ian Mackenzie is Federated Farmers environment spokesperson.
