Freshwater Under Pressure: What New Zealand’s Water Quality Means for Contact Recreation

A guest post from Andi Cockroft, Chair, CORANZ

A quiet change in the places we once trusted

For generations, New Zealanders have formed an almost instinctive relationship with fresh water. Rivers, lakes, springs, and swimming holes have been more than just geographic features — they have been playgrounds, classrooms, larders, meeting places, and places of healing. From childhood summers spent leaping off riverbanks, to quiet evenings casting a line as light fades from the valley, freshwater has always been central to outdoor life in New Zealand.

But a quiet shift has been taking place. Increasingly, warning signs are appearing at popular swimming spots. Algae slicks coat once-clear stones. Streams that were reliable for drinking during long tramps are now approached with hesitation. For anglers, fish populations and behaviour are changing in ways that feel unfamiliar. None of this has happened overnight — it has crept in, season by season, in small increments that have slowly altered the confidence many of us once felt around our waterways.

Recent environmental reporting in New Zealand confirms what many recreationists have already observed with their own eyes: in a significant number of places, freshwater quality is declining, and it is directly affecting the way people can safely interact with rivers, lakes, and wetlands.

This is not an abstract environmental debate. It is a practical, personal issue for swimmers, paddlers, anglers, trampers, hunters, dog walkers, families, and entire communities who have built their way of life around open access to clean water.

Understanding “contact recreation”

Contact recreation is a simple concept. It refers to any activity where a person’s body is likely to come into contact with water — swimming, fishing, wading, kayaking, rafting, river crossing, and even children playing at the water’s edge. Unlike boating that stays above the surface, contact recreation carries an added health risk when water quality is poor.

In New Zealand, one of the primary indicators used to assess suitability for contact recreation is the presence of E. coli bacteria. E. coli itself is not necessarily the only harmful organism present, but it is used as a strong indicator of faecal contamination in the water — which in turn suggests potential presence of other harmful pathogens.

High levels of E. coli are linked to:

• Gastrointestinal illness
  
• Skin and ear infections
  
• Eye infections
  
• More serious health problems for young children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems
  

For those who regularly spend time in rivers and lakes, this is more than a theoretical risk. Many people can recall unexplained stomach bugs following a swim, or rashes developing after time in the water. These experiences are becoming less random and more patterned.

Water that looks clean is not necessarily safe. Flowing rivers can easily mask contamination. Lakes that appear calm and beautiful can harbour dangerous levels of bacteria. The good news is that modern monitoring has improved our understanding of where the risks are highest — the bad news is that many once-trusted sites now fail basic safety thresholds.

The picture from recent data

New environmental assessments show that many rivers and groundwater sources in New Zealand have experienced repeated breaches of safe levels for E. coli. In other words, there are sites where, at least once in recent years, contamination has reached levels considered unsuitable for direct human contact.

Groundwater, which many rural households rely on for drinking, is also a concern. In a number of monitored wells, E. coli has been detected at levels indicating contamination from surface sources. This means that even water drawn from underground cannot automatically be assumed to be safe without treatment.

Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are also present in elevated amounts in many waterways. While they may not cause immediate illness in the same way as bacteria, they contribute to:

• Excessive weed growth
  
• Algal blooms
  
• Reduced oxygen levels
  
• Degraded habitat for aquatic life
  

For anglers and ecologists alike, these changes can reduce insect life, affect fish breeding, and alter the entire balance of a river or lake ecosystem. Over time, these shifts affect not only recreation quality but the survival of native freshwater species.

Wetlands, which once acted as natural filters and buffers for water systems, have been reduced to a fraction of their original extent. Those that remain are often fragmented or degraded. Without healthy wetlands slowing, filtering and absorbing water, contaminants move more easily and quickly into rivers and lakes.

What this looks like on the ground

Official figures can be powerful, but for many recreationists the true story is written in lived experience:

• Swimming holes once used every summer now avoided
  
• Rivers avoided after rainfall for days or even weeks
  
• Trout streams with fewer visible fish and insect hatches
  
• Murky shallows where clear gravel beds once lay
  
• Algal growth clinging to rocks and river margins
  
• Signs warning against swimming in places that were once community gathering points
  

These changes are not evenly spread across the country. Some catchments remain in relatively good condition, often in less-developed or well-managed areas. Others are under significant pressure. This unevenness can make the issue harder to grasp — someone who spends most of their time in a healthier area may see little change, while others experience it daily.

This can also lead to disagreement and division. One person’s reality does not cancel out another’s. Both are valid reflections of local conditions. The value in environmental reporting is that it helps connect individual experiences into a broader national picture.

Why this matters for outdoor recreation

Outdoor recreation in New Zealand is inseparable from freshwater. Even activities that are not water-based rely on streams and springs for drinking and cooking water in the backcountry. River valleys form natural walking routes. Lakes attract trampers, campers, cyclists and photographers. Many of the country’s iconic experiences — the Whanganui River journey, alpine lake traverses, backcountry fishing trips — would lose much of their meaning without safe, healthy water.

If contact recreation becomes unsafe or restricted in more places, several things follow:

• Fewer places people can safely swim and paddle
  
• Increased pressure on “clean” sites, causing overcrowding
  
• Loss of informal, local recreation areas
  
• Decline in outdoor participation — especially among children
  
• Reduced connection between people and their environment
  

There is also a cultural and generational cost. Knowledge passed down — “this is a safe place to swim”, “this is where the best fish lie”, “this stream always runs clear” — starts to lose reliability. That loss of trust in the landscape is deeply unsettling.

Outdoor users as the early warning system

One of the overlooked truths is that outdoor recreationists are often the first to detect change. They are out there regularly, in all seasons, in all weather. They notice subtle differences: the timing of a hatch, the disappearance of a certain species, the increased muddiness after rain, the smell of stagnant water on a still evening.

Recreational users, whether anglers, paddlers, or trampers, are not merely consumers of the environment — they are long-term observers. This collective, lived knowledge is incredibly valuable. When hundreds or thousands of people notice decline in different places, the pattern becomes hard to dismiss.

There is a real opportunity here to elevate the role of recreation communities as partners in monitoring and reporting. Citizen science, water sampling, and photographic documentation already take place in ad-hoc ways. With support and recognition, this could become a powerful supplement to official monitoring networks.

Constructive pathways forward

It is easy to allow discussions about freshwater to devolve into blame or political opposition. That serves little purpose, and often fractures groups that should be standing together. A more constructive approach begins by identifying what most people already agree on:

• Clean, swimmable water is a good thing
  
• Healthy rivers benefit everyone
  
• Future generations deserve the same enjoyment we had
  
• Practical, achievable improvements are better than slogans
  

From a recreation perspective, some practical goals could include:

• Prioritising water quality in well-used recreational catchments
  
• Protecting headwaters and spring sources
  
• Supporting riparian planting led by community groups
  
• Reducing direct contamination from stock and waste
  
• Expanding real-time water quality information for the public
  
• Encouraging local stewardship instead of remote control
  

None of these require extreme positions. They only require a shared belief that water matters.

A shared resource, a shared responsibility

Freshwater belongs to no single organisation, government, or interest group. It weaves through farmland, towns, conservation land and remote valleys alike. It is shaped by countless small decisions made far upstream — and felt by those downstream who simply want a safe place to dip their feet, wet a line, or teach a child how to float on their back in summer water.

In the end, this is less about science and more about stewardship.

Will the next generation be able to point to a river and say, “This is where I learned to swim”?

That answer is still unwritten.

But the pen is in our hands.