Dr Peter Trolove
This is my second attempt to stand for ECan in the
I was not as committed on my first attempt as I had committed to work as a locum vet on the West Coast over spring causing me to miss many “meet the candidate” events.
Now fully retired I have given this campaign my full attention and have invested more in flyers, newspaper ads, and have had professional assistance with my websites.
Local body politics has proved to be robust game where facts can be trumped by childish rhetoric with democratic principles circumvented.
This election has exposed a divided community where cynical
Gerrymandering
The rapid growth of the Selwyn District should have qualified Selwyn to have two ECan councillors under the Electoral Commission guidelines with the Ashburton District and South Canterbury combined having the population to justify just two councillors in a combined ward.
After initially proposing this option, the ECan farmers quickly reversed their decision, to ensure a further three years of farmer control.
Selling themselves to the ratepayers
Both the incumbent councillors claimed to be science based and defenders of the environment.
This should have been a hard sell in the face of ECan declaring a Nitrate Emergency, at the last meeting of the triennium.
Ian McKenzie
Ian McKenzie stressed his work with the Hinds managed aquifer recharge and claimed it had successfully lowered the nitrate levels in this polluted river to 3 mg of nitrate.
I looked up ECan’s database which is present on the LAWA water quality maps.
The only Hinds River site records a 6.3 mg/L NO3-N five year mean.
My own monitoring on 9 August 2024 and 4 August 2025 revealed nitrate levels of 7.45 and 8.38 mg/L NO3-N respectively.
“A one off aberration” according to McKenzie.
McKenzie claimed to have been responsible for river management in the Ashburton District.
(Possibly he played some role in governance although any outcomes would have been due to the work of council staff).
ECan has created a mess of its own making by allowing over 12,000 ha of river margins to be “lost” to agricultural encroachment, then failing to recover the same land needed for flood control. This land now has to be purchased at market rates and or the vegetation at the margins removed to give constrained rivers “room to move”.
A failure of governance one might say.
On his Facebook site and at the candidate meetings McKenzie has played down the public health significance of high nitrate in our water. He quoted a professor of plant science and a bowel surgeon stating nitrate does not cause cancer, with the professor even claiming nitrate is good for you.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies ingested nitrate and nitrite, under conditions that lead to endogenous nitrosation, as Group 2A: Probably Carcinogenic to Humans. This means there is limited evidence in humans and sufficient evidence in experimental animals for carcinogenicity. The concern arises because ingested nitrates and nitrites can convert to
It seems highly ironic that a longstanding councillor seeking
https://www.stuff.co.nz/
McKenzie looks quite pleased for the photo opportunity to be placed next to Hoggard and Seymour as they talked up separating Christchurch from ECan
The following day two other Press reporters exposed the rhetoric;
https://www.thepress.co.nz/
Regional authorities such as ECan govern environmental matters which cross the boundaries of the city and district councils within them, including air, water and land quality and public transport.
New Zealand has six unitary authorities — covering Auckland, Gisborne, Marlborough, Nelson, Tasman and the Chatham Islands — which combine local and regional council activities.
Seymour’s proposed solution — adding Christchurch to the list — has been previously considered and dismissed, largely on the basis of ratepayer burden.
Losing such a large number of ratepayers — about 80% of Canterbury residents live in the greater Christchurch area — would impose a significant financial burden on the remaining 20% of rural ratepayers to fund ECan’s activities.
The ambitions of the Ashburton District Council
The only advertised opportunity to present to the Ashburton District was at a meeting hosted by Hamish Riach, CEO of the Ashburton District Council at the Ashburton College.
Having sat through an evening of prospective District councillors talking down ECan and suggesting the Ashburton District Council should itself issue consents, I was allotted just thirty seconds to say my piece.
I expressed my disgust at the mood of the room putting profit and pollution above the interests of ordinary ratepayers.
By contrast Sunckell and McKenzie were treated as heroes by this centre of irrigation and pollution.
Ironically ratepayers passively accepted they would be funding the District Council’s plans to supply low nitrate drinking water to Tinwald.
NB residents on the NE side of Ashburton with polluted wells can gain access to Ashburton town water if they pay a connection fee of $12000.
A prime example of private profits and socialised pollution.
It was telling that the retiring mayor of Ashburton, a director of the big Ashburton irrigation schemes and once owner of two dairy farms asked me quietly at the end of the meeting “Peter will the environment recover?”
Ian McKenzie has been careless with facts in this campaign wrongly calling myself and a fellow councillor Green Party members among other comments at the livestreamed council meeting 17 September 2025
One comment that I cannot let pass is Ian McKenzie calling Peter Trolove a liar.
John Sunckell
John has had a lower profile at the candidate meetings, however he also claims the scientific high ground based on his experience as a paramedic and emphasised his long associaation with the Selwyn Water Zone committee.
Further to ECan’s Nitrate Emergency, Dr Bryan Jenkins ex CEO of ECan published a paper in the Australasian Journal of Water Resources: Science and policy delay leading to loss of natural capital: case study Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere (Nov 2022)
This paper highlights delays in developing environmental interventions to address overallocation of groundwater and water quality for Te Waihora, and considers the extent of development beyond sustainable limits may have permanently compromised the ability to implement comprehensive environmental interventions.
There were long delays in recognition of the problem and in developing the science.
There were also delays due to resisting the science. Environmental outcomes were made secondary to the economy and GDP.
As a dairy farmer John Sunckell would have been balancing
It is significant that the Selwyn ZIP plan accommodates a “bottom line” for nitrate in the streams flowing into Te Waihora of 8.5 mg/L NO3-N when the Ministry for the Environment 2020 NPS FM “bottom line” is 2.4 mg/L NO3-N.
Similarly the Mfe bottom line for NZ lakes is 800 micrograms/L NO3-N (or mg/ m3) whereas the limit for Te Waihora in the Land and Water Regional Plan is 3,400 ug/L.
I doubt that another three years of Sunckell governance will contribute to the restoration of this lake. For now the natural capital of the lake is lost.
Peter Trolove
With the Concerned Ratepayers Canterbury Region, (CRCR) orchestrating the candidate meetings around Selwyn, allowing ECan candidates either one or two minutes to present themselves, and with limited question from the floor, these meeting do not allow candidates more than a few superficial sound bites.
As one trained to look more deeply, I found these meetings frustrating as they limited the candidates ability to introduce themselves to the people they hope to represent.
What I can offer
- I have a long record of freshwater advocacy backed up with relevant qualifications.
- I recognise that the rapid growth of Selwyn has left this district short of services and resources. As ECan has a role with transport, I would look to maximise connectivity with buses and public transport.
McKenzie has a “
- Polluter pays. The “nitrate emergency” will impose costs on District Councils as the needs of community water supplies can not longer be met by drilling a well. The Selwyn District Council plans to spend $400 million to supply Selwyn with water from a facility to be developed near the Waimakariri River.
Ratepayers in essence paying for agribusiness pollution.
I believe polluters should pay to mitigate the effects of their pollution.
- ECan a failure as a regulator. I have spend six years managing compliance at an export meat plant as the Supervising Meat Veterinarian. To my mind compliance, monitoring and enforcement should not be optional nor subject to local politics.
- I have worked as a vet in a number of practice and regulatory roles. In my profession there is not such thing as a partial certificate.
Trust is a non negotiable obligation for a vet.
- With 50 years experience as a vet, I have learned that people do not judge you when things go wrong, they judge you on what you do about it when things go wrong.