by Will Appelbe
Greenpeace is calling on Environment Canterbury (ECan) to put an end to dairy expansion on the plains, following new data that shows nitrate contamination worsening in the region.
ECan’s latest Annual Ground Water Quality Survey released this week shows that
“This data confirms what’s been clear for years: nitrate contamination is a worsening crisis for Canterbury. Everybody should have access to clean, safe drinking water, but for many Cantabrians, turning on the kitchen tap means worrying about getting sick,” says Greenpeace freshwater campaigner Will Appelbe.
“The ECan study directly acknowledges that the main source of nitrate contamination is intensive dairying and the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. It points out that most affected communities are those ‘in areas around and downstream of intensive farming’.
“Despite the worsening freshwater crisis, ECan has given approval for a wave of dairy expansions across the region, which will devastate freshwater ecosystems and increase nitrate contamination of drinking water.”
Since the start of the year, Environment Canterbury has approved over a dozen resource consents for dairy expansions, enabling nearly 16,000 cattle to be added to the region’s dairy herd.
“Town supplies in Hinds, Darfield and Oxford have already exceeded 5 mg/L, levels of nitrate associated with an increased risk of cancer and
“It’s not too late to turn things around. If we reduce the number of dairy cows and phase out the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, we can restore water quality and ensure that everyone, no matter where they live, has access to clean, safe drinking water.
“Environment Canterbury is utterly failing in its responsibility to protect sources of drinking water. People across the region expect better, and are willing to stand up for safe drinking water. Candidates standing for the Canterbury Regional Council in the upcoming local elections must commit to clean drinking water for all, and to end the intensive dairy industry’s contamination of groundwater.”
On reading the base pdf report, ECan states that it measures wells from September to December. This will understate the level of nitrate leaching as nitrate will be taken up by plants when ground temperatures rise above 10 C.
My own 5 years worth of tests show nitrate levels peak in August/September.
Given many countries have dropped their Maximum Allowable Value (MAV) to 5.0 mg/L NO3-N recognizing pregnant women exhibit shortened gestation and premature birth from around 5.0 mg/L NO3-N, the graphed results in Ashburton are simply appalling. It costs a household $2000 to $4000 to filter nitrate polluted from a well depending on whether is is a low flow point source (single tap), or a filter capable of whole house filtration. Of course as nitrate and E. Coli pollution typically occur together a separate cost must be added to kill the fecal pathogens from cattle that leach into groundwater. The RMA requires ECan to protect drinking water at source. Despite this rural councilors and city business councilors, (the majority vote), consistently chose the economy over peoples’ health citing the importance of economic growth. The map giving the locations of the test wells are also revealing; ECan is monitoring many wells such as those connected to braided rivers or in the foothills zone where low nitrate results are expected. I.e. ECan is limiting its testing where groundwater is most polluted.
High nitrate levels in drinking water are a known factor in colon cancer incidence. Colon cancer rates over the past 20 years have more than doubled in some parts of Canterbury, most noticeably Rangiora and Hinds. Christchurch Hospital has had to increase its screening facilities for colon cancer because of this. The Canterbury Medical Officer of Health, in 2013, warned of all this and he was ignored and then pilloried for his efforts.
Too many people making too much money = suffering for everybody else.
Ever since PM John Key aided by Environment Minister Nick Smith did a repugnant state seizure of ECan about 2010, ECan has never recovered its sense of responsibility. Of course Key and Smith were serving National’s corporate mates in large scale dairying, which was environmentally stupid and irresponsible.
It seems weird Smith as environment minister was party to this unprincipled communist-like State grab of ECan – a democratically elected council – and the resulting dire environmental damage with nitrate poisoning of aquatic life.
Then there’s the human health angle. Do Key and Smith – and ECan have a conscience about the world high bowel cancer rates and people’s health and mortality?
Well spoken Greenpeace, but it should not be forgotten the research work in measuring nitrate levels by Dr Peter Trolove and the advocacy by the NZ Federation of Freshwater Anglers.
Where is the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for the Environment on this environmental tragedy? Where is the Ministry of Health and North Canterbury Fish and Game and Fish and Game NZ?
The head in the sand approach will continue to work well for ECan and Co until it becomes clearer to the press that the nitrates are killing people. I am disappointed at the deafening silence from the Health Ministry. They should at least be duplicating Trolove’s studies or the work quoted by Green Peace. They are not. The word that we should all be screaming at ECan and the Government is WHY????????????????
Nitrates, water rights, deeper bores, pine plantation drying land, mono culture crops like vineyards, dairying ferlizer and run off.
The rivers of this country are doomed by so many factors it isn’t funny.
I used to enjoy travelling to the rakaia salmon comp but with a dying river the fish don’t come so neither do the tourists.
My provinces rivers are disappearing in my lifetime. Where as kids we could dive headfirst into the river from the road bridge near Renwick into Marlboroughs main river the wairau. Now peak summer it’s knee deep.
As people complaining we will never stop the trough dwellers giving the life resource away until it effects them and their water coolers ooze stagnant water in the office
When I was living at the Selwyn Huts about 30 years ago I wandered around local waterways looking for trout. I still recall the shock of seeing signs warning of human waste being in the water. The neglect of waterways seems to be as ingrained as ever. One has to ask, what have the “official” guardians of our waterways been doing for all these decades?
‘Just when will they ever learn’? Lessons on the potential and actual contamination of surface then ground water has been illustrated for centuries – such as the FERTILE TRIANGLE in the Middle East. The fact that the stony light soils of Canterbury and the consequential aquifer contamination due to high fertiliser and stocking rates surely comes as no surprise. The work done by Dr Peter Trolove and Greenpeace on nitrate contamination is but a canary to this contamination. When will commonsense prevail?