Alan Emerson (November 14) fired off a lot of shots, particularly at Waikato Regional Council, accusing it of arrogance and taking “snake oil and bureaucracy to insane levels” over the plan.
But people must get their facts right.
Voice concerns by all means but get a sound understanding of the rivers and the plan and submit your fact-based views, not rhetoric, on its proposals.
A key fact: the Waikato River is not, as has been claimed, one of the “cleanest” rivers in the world.
Close to its source at Lake Taupo the river is indeed very clean but that changes dramatically downstream.
Water quality in its lower reaches ranks in the bottom half of 500 sites nationally for key indicators such as nitrogen, phosphorus, E. coli (a measure of faecal contamination) and water clarity.
The Waipa faces a range of similar but more serious problems.
The Government’s National Policy Statement for Freshwater (NPS) and the legally binding Crown-iwi Vision and Strategy for the rivers require the regional council to address such problems.
It’s the Vision and Strategy that calls for the rivers to be swimmable and fishable everywhere. Tthe plan covers the first 10-years of an 80-year journey towards that goal.
The NPS prescribes measures that must be met to achieve safe standards. NPS guidelines were used in developing the plan.
In partnership with river iwi, the council tasked a multi-sector Collaborative Stakeholder Group (CSG) to come up with a plan. It was not done by the council.
The CSG, which I chaired, comprised 24 people representing dairy, sheep and beef, horticulture, rural professionals, Federated Farmers, Maori farming interests, community members, Forest and Bird, industry, water users and local government.
The plan change aims to manage the four key contaminants to water: pathogens as measured by E. coli, sediment, phosphorus and nitrogen.
The council’s role was notifying the plan for public submissions and it will now be considered next year by independent commissioners.
The CSG was advised by independent experts, the Technical Leaders Group (TLG) assisted by a wide range of experts from across the country.
Science needed to be agreed by the TLG before it was presented to the CSG.
So, the concerns about the health of the rivers, compared to national guidelines, are firmly science-based.
The CSG was united in wanting to achieve the Vision and Strategy, though some did not agree with all methods endorsed by the majority.
These differences of approach will no doubt be considered during the submissions and hearings processes.
The CSG acknowledges financial implications for landowners under the plan.
Modelling indicates the number of swimmable sites doubles but there is also a catchment-wide annual profit drop of about $40 million.
For context a 10c movement in milk price is plus or minus $24 million to the catchment.
The CSG took an evolutionary approach, deciding that 10% progress along the journey to the Vision and Strategy in the first 10 years is appropriate to manage the conflicting interests of water quality and economic activity.
But the community, through the CSG and central government, is effectively saying land activity intensification, with a subsequent increase of contaminants to water, is no longer acceptable and that any intensification can happen only if the negative consequences are managed.
In my view it is hard to argue that a 10% improvement target for water quality for the first 10 years is either extreme or arrogant, given the long-term goal.
References by Emerson to European Union standards being less stringent are irrelevant to plan formulation because the NPS contains New Zealand’s rules and the Vision and Strategy has rules special to the Waikato.
They are what the CSG and the regional council must have regard to.
For many, the plan goes too far, for others it goes nowhere near far enough.
But, through the Healthy Rivers Wai Ora process, we do have a proposed plan change that recognises that mechanisms to improve water quality need to be put in place now and this focus, in my opinion, is more targeted than could have been achieved through “traditional” policy development processes.
