Poisoned waterways

The Waikato River used to be a place for swimming and gathering food. Now its waters are murky and tainted. What can be done?

Eel fisherman Mike Holmes opens up the throttle on his 4m tinny, and speeds up the Waikato River.

The bow rears up, cutting a path through the translucent green water near Ohaaki, 30km northeast of Taupo. A few metres below the surface, the black silt bottom is visible, patterned with ripples of white pumice sand.

Crystal clear is not the usual view of the Waikato River, which, by the time it gets to Hamilton, is a murky green-brown.

Holmes, a full-time eel fisherman, is not happy with the state of Waikato's waterways.

He's been working on the area's rivers, lakes and streams since 1979, catching shortfin and longfin eels. But they have been decreasing in size and number; skinny and "rubbish" where they were once fat and plentiful.

There has also been an unexplained reduction in the number of elvers (baby eels) reaching minimum catchable weight since their release.

"It's hard to explain," says Holmes, 53, a straight talker who is at home in the outdoors. "What can it be? It's either a disease type of issue or a chemical issue. It's not koi or catfish, but it's a huge loss and we don't know what's causing it."

The problem could be as clear as the water under the boat.

A report from Environment Waikato, released earlier this month on the condition of rural water and soil in the Waikato region, paints a disturbing picture of water quality across the heartland.

Agricultural activities are causing much of the problem; nitrogen and phosphorous from fertilisers and stock excrement have been running off or seeping through farmland.

There are 4500 dairy farms in the Waikato region, each leaching 3.6 tonnes of nitrogen on average per year. With fewer marshes and wetlands, which act as natural kidneys filtering out nutrients, they are leaching into ditches, streams, rivers and lakes. Waterways which were once healthy, full of plant and fish life, are now quiet and clogged with blooms of toxic algae, their ominous spread blocking out light and other plant life.

It doesn't affect only the rivers and streams, but nutrients flow all the way to the ocean. Scientific estimates indicate the equivalent of 97 truckloads of urea fertiliser enters the sea at Port Waikato every week; and 32 truckloads to the Firth of Thames. Some oyster and mussel farms around the Coromandel Peninsula can't harvest after more than 10mm of rain due to bacteria from farmland washing into the sea.

It can also make water unsafe to drink; in February 2005, an algal bloom caused the deaths of nine cattle on a Waikato farm, with levels 760 times above animal drinking water standards.

About 70 per cent of waterways are not safe for swimming, especially water downstream of Ngaruawahia and the lower Waipa, due to bacteria from faecal matter in the water.

Holmes takes his boat downstream, where the change in water quality is obvious.

"From here, down from the Mihi Bridge, this is the beginning of the cancer," says Holmes. "The Waiotapu Stream is where the first big pile of crap filters in."

The boat jets up into the mouth of the stream, an opaque khaki green, the smell cloying and muddy a contrast to up river.

"There's a big difference in the visibility and clarity, and it's fairly typical of most of the rivers now," says Holmes. "They are like this. Dirty. When you are in dairy farm country many of the streams are sickly green with cow shit. Dairy farming is responsible for 90 per cent of the problem."

Holmes says it is what you can't see that is more of the problem; the invisible nutrients from farm run-off.

He lays 30 to 40 nets a day along the river at 22 tonnes last year he is the biggest private quota eel fisherman in his area. Much of his catch is sent to a processing factory at Te Kauwhata, then exported to Asia. In the past, the factory could source its eels from within an hour's drive, now they have to get them from all over the North Island.

"Eels can handle a lot, but if the eels are feeling it, it is bad," he says.

This isn't the only place of concern.

It's happening right through the Waikato, and it is worse at lower lakes with no water flowing through, which become collection areas for fertiliser and nutrients; impacting water quality, and ultimately, plants and fish life.

"At Lake Waikere (near Te Kauwhata), it used to be 80-odd tonne (of eel) a year out of the lake, now it is half a dozen (tonne), and the water is dirty and cloudy," says Holmes. "Now that lake doesn't grow weed, it doesn't grow fresh water mussels and the eels there are skinny. It's a basket case situation, it's pretty terrible. (Lake) Ngaroto is another.

"When I first started fishing Ngaroto, there was lots of weed and lots of eel and lots of fish. Now the eels are rubbish and the weed is gone."

 

 

YOU CAN SMELL the Waikato River before you get to it, the unpleasant pong of sticky sediment rising from shallows of the grand waterway at a park near Huntly Power Station and Waahi Pa.

In the soft, drizzly rain of Tuesday morning Tukoroirangi Morgan and Taitimu Maipi walk across deserted grass to the riverbank, each with their memories of what it was like here in earlier times, when the river didn't smell, when whanau gathered to play and fish, when whitebait could be seen in the clear, sandy shallows, when it was the foodbasket for Tainui. "Now," says Maipi, gesturing across the river to the township, "the foodbasket's over there at Countdown."

He adds, eyeing the murky river, "it would be a brave man to eat anything out of there".

Morgan, 50, and Maipi, 70, both have their roots deep in this place, and they despair of the dirty river that was once a significant food source and playground for Tainui. Tainui chairman Morgan grew up at Huntly's Waahi Pa on the west bank, and he has been co-negotiator in the historic Waikato River settlement the tribe signed with the Government last month. Maipi has his home at Waahi and chairs the Waahi Whaanui Trust, a cluster of six local marae. When Maipi was a youngster living at Te Ohaki Marae, about 3-4 km downstream, he rowed a canoe to school at Huntly College and his family picnicked on an island in the river, eating watercress, freshwater mussels (kaio) and fish.

Morgan says Environment Waikato's research is "a wake up call for all of us, the effects of the degradation are huge, the scale is huge". He describes the report as "pretty damning on farmers", but he believes it is a challenge for all parties to be more "proactive, intelligent and calculated about how we work together to improve". Morgan wants to co-operate with farmers on this mammoth task: "We're all stakeholders, we can't be isolated from each other."

This morning, though, we're here to talk about the way things were on the river, although Huntly, in fact, is not one of the worst affected places detailed in the report. Some aspects of water quality in the river at this point are showing signs of improvement, but levels of nitrogen and sediment are high. Neither does any favours for Huntly. As the report explains, nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus promote algal growth, and the algae make the water appear green and murky, or "turbid". When water becomes turbid it blocks sunlight from penetrating and can cause bed-dwelling aquatic plants to die. It also makes it difficult for fish and other animals to see their prey and native fish migrating upstream from the ocean will avoid highly turbid waterways.

Morgan and Maipi have seen such changes on their doorstep, the decline of river kai and the resulting shift in social practices. Morgan pretty much learned to swim in the river at Huntly. The safer Waahi stream provided the "training pool", then the river was the next challenge. He jokes the big kids would swim the channel with little kids on their backs and leave them on a sand-bank: "We had to figure out how to get back." Not as risky as it sounds, because there was always a big group involved. When the river swimmers were older and bolder, they used to swim across to the movies in town with their clothes secured in plastic bags.

"We lived in the water," Morgan says. "We took kai, the whitebait, small crayfish from under the willows, fresh water mussels (kaio). We'd cook crayfish in little pots. We all knew how to catch eels, these were essential skills." Morgan went eeling with his grandfather and recalls them once catching a huge eel "the biggest I've ever seen". He adds: "Why would you want to go catch eels in this place when you can't eat them?"

Maipi describes how houses bordering the waterway each had an eel trap and gardens to provide food for the table, people fished for mullet, trout, catfish and carp, and 40 or so years ago he and others were drinking water straight from the river. The shallows were clear, with no sediment, the sand acting as a natural filter.

 

Perhaps a decade later, Maipi says the then Huntly Borough Council was pumping raw sewage into the river; on a lunchtime swim when he worked at the town's post office he recalls seeing "white paper and shit floating past". Such practices have long since stopped, but nutrient leaching and run-off from farms have added to the river's woes.

Morgan is far from despondent, however, as he surveys the dirty water in front of him. This is the week the Waikato River Settlement Bill had its first reading in Parliament, the start of the legislative process for the tribe to become a partner of the Crown in relation to the protection and restoration of the Waikato River.

So while Morgan is mindful of the scale of the problem, he says the tribe is now beginning a journey to restore the health of this prized waterway. "The claim was always about the clean-up. We must consolidate what we want to do, and what is the nature of our contribution. We have to be creative about how we galvanise our marae committees."

Morgan stopped swimming in the river when he was about 19 because it had become too much of a health hazard and he doubts he'll do it again in his lifetime. Although maybe in 20 years, he speculates. He'd like to think his grandson might swim there one day.

"It is a huge challenge."

BUT NOT everyone agrees with Environment Waikato's report on Waikato's rural soil and water.

Federated Farmers is feeling defensive about the report, and has come out swinging.

Last week Federated Farmers national chairman Lachlan McKenzie said it was "not based on science" and "a poorly written essay," despite the obvious science and referencing contained in the report.

This week, Waikato Federated Farmers president Stewart Wadey was still beating the same drum. "We have spoken to EW because of the poor science in the document, which has unfortunately been picked up by the media, and indicated that all farmers were dirty farmers."

He says although "the graphs look spectacular, they are not entirely accurate" and says EW has used "poetic licence" in writing the report.

Wadey is concerned all farmers are "being pilloried", when most are compliant, and many have changed the way they farm and are doing their best to improve environmental practices.

"We would like to see some acknowledgement that we are making improvements. All that is being done is we are being badgered (in the media)," says Wadey. "Ninety-three per cent of farmers are doing an excellent job and it is about seven per cent who are letting us down. The majority of farmers are environmentally aware and excellent food producers as well."

The Dairying and Clean Streams Accord, signed in 2003 by Fonterra, regional councils, and the Environment and Agriculture and Forestry Ministries, is a good start, setting environmental targets for dairy farmers to meet.

Most farmers are complying with effluent dumping regulations, and voluntarily retiring land near waterways, fencing off a few metres back from streams and planting natives, to encourage biodiversity and protect water from contamination.

Wadey says you wouldn't get that level of compliance in the building industry, or with people having current warrants of fitness on their cars.

He also denies there is a problem with water quality in the area, saying Aucklanders drink (processed) water out of the Waikato River and the swimming and water skiing at Lake Whakamaru and Lake Orakei are good.

"There's no problem," says Wadey. "There's been an immense improvement in the water quality, and the contamination that is coming through now is from farming techniques 40 years ago. There is a decreased amount of fertiliser being used, although new land is coming through (near Taupo and Tokoroa), but in general, there is evidence there is less fertiliser going in."

Wadey says the cost of nitrogen fertiliser (now at $1300 a tonne) and technology means farmers are not throwing fertiliser on the land like they used to. Nutrient budgets are used by an estimated "95 to 97 per cent" of farmers, says Wadey. It is a soil test to work out how much fertiliser is required for farm production, helping to prevent over-fertilising and loss of nutrients from the land.

Wadey says government and agricultural industry experts in the past encouraged farmers to fertilise as much as possible, with subsidies available in the 1970s and aerial planes dropping fertiliser on hills. In the 1980s and '90s "best practice" led by AgResearch and Dexcel, encouraged production and intensification of farming and feed lots, feed pads and maize silage then came into vogue, says Wadey.

"A whole generation of farmers are getting the blame, but most of the (nutrient) loading was done by their grandfathers. We are now using fertiliser more efficiently."

The farming industry is big business for New Zealand, with 25 per cent of the country's gross domestic product from dairy, says Wadey.

It is also an economic force in the Waikato. "Fifty-three per cent of Hamilton citizens' salaries are directly attributable to agriculture," says Wadey. "The economies of Morrinsville and Matamata are totally reliant on agriculture."

Although the environment is a concern, the economics of farming tend to put Federated Farmers at loggerheads with Environment Waikato.

"(Farming is) a business, not a lifestyle anymore," says Wadey. "We have to make sure it's economic, but balance it with environmental issues. We should be working together but at the moment we seem to have a disconnect."

Although they want to work with the regional council, the organisation's regulatory approach and the "unbalanced" report frustrate them. "It doesn't help to have a teacher at one end, with an old school cane, dishing out punishment," says Wadey.

 

 

 

 

THE NGAROTO Sailing Club is a hub for yacht enthusiasts in the area. Most weekends you can see about 20 boats sailing on Lake Ngaroto, near Te Awamutu. The club's been going since 1967, popular with families and kids, and holds regular regattas a focal point for the sailing community in the central North Island.

The lake has also come to the attention of Waikato District Health Board medical officer of health, Dell Hood over the years, with health warnings over toxic algae and swimming safety. It is highly enriched with nutrients, and is brown, muddy and has problems with algal blooms. Twice, regattas have had to be moved, due to poor water conditions.

A 1000ha peat lake, surrounded by farmland, the character of the place has caused much of the problem. It is shallow about 3m deep and there is no outlet, so nutrients and effluent run off into the peaty muddy lake.

Club members are concerned that negative coverage of the lake water quality hurts sailing attendance, but are fronting up to discuss the issues that have long plagued them.

Club vice-commodore Ross Wrenn and webmaster Nigel McCarter are sitting around the kitchen table, sipping tea, at McCarter's Hillcrest home.

The club monitors water quality at Lake Ngaroto. "We wouldn't encourage members to swim in it," says Wrenn. They offer showers, and hoses to water down boats.

There are fewer native fish and eel in the lake, more catfish, rudd and koi. "Occasionally they die, and it is not nice," says Wrenn, who also works as a district manager for Livestock Improvement.

"They float on the surface and it looks bad."

McCarter, a former fisheries scientist who is also on the Advisory Committee for Regional Environment (Acre), backs the science of the report. "The (EW) report is absolutely right in showing the state of the waterways in the Waikato, but the first step is recognising there is a problem," he says. "The report is a bigger trend issue and it's extremely serious for lowland waters in general. There is a denial in the farming community that there is a problem."

The Waipa District Council has made improvements around the lake, including a boardwalk and the planting of native plants, helping to mitigate nutrient leaching from surrounding farms.

"We have started making a difference but it's got to be a combined effort, from the land owners and the community and local farmers," says McCarter. "It will never go back to its pristine state, full stop. But with a reasonable effort, things can improve."

"You've got to ask questions about what types of fertiliser are being put on, and when, and how far from streams and are there buffer zones," asks Wrenn. "Do you restrict the kind of grazing you do there," asks McCarter.

Dr Peter Singleton, the regional council programme manager behind the report, says many farmers are already making positive changes. "I'm uncertain whether the negative views of (Federated Farmers) leadership reflects the grass roots response of farmers. In my experience, when the issues are put out to farmers, they are more than happy to change."

He has been frustrated at comments from Federated Farmers leaders such as Lachlan McKenzie and Stewart Wadey, some of it misleading to farmers and "unsubstantiated".

That fertiliser use is going down is "complete rubbish" and "there is no way the grandfathers are responsible".

He hopes leaders come together, and the report goes from a talking point to something that can make a difference. "I reckon it's groundbreaking, and it makes people aware of what's going on, in a way that's readable," says Singleton.

"I think we are the first regional council to stand up and see we have a problem."

Whether everyone comes to admit that, remains to be seen.

 

 

 

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