Favourite swimming spots on show

Monitoring of water quality at the region’s popular freshwater and coastal swimming spots is under way for summer, with results available on the Taranaki Regional Council website, www.trc.govt.nz.

The annual monitoring programme has been running since 1979 for coastal beaches and since 1987 for freshwater swimming spots. This year it covers 12 coastal beaches and 18 freshwater recreation sites, with samples collected weekly at most sites during summer.

The Taranaki Regional Council’s Director-Environment Quality, Gary Bedford, says monitoring in recent summers shows that the quality of seawater at popular coastal beaches has been consistently better than the national average.

“Last year, 99% of samples taken from coastal beaches were within Ministry for the Environment guidelines and no site reached the ‘Action’ level,” he says.

“And water quality at popular recreational spots on rivers is better than a decade ago and far better than in the 1960s and 1970s. Last year, 72% of all samples from freshwater sites met the Ministry for the Environment recreational water quality guidelines.

“Wildfowl and gulls were the major source of contamination at the two sites that routinely exceeded the guideline – near the mouths of the Waiwhakaiho River and Te Henui Stream. Excluding these two sites, 94% of all samples met the guidelines”

To see the latest results, select ‘Freshwater’ or ‘Coastal’ water quality from the ‘Environmental Data” drop-down list on the Council’s home page, www.trc.govt.nz.

The Taranaki Regional Council’s water quality monitoring data is also displayed on the national environmental monitoring website Land, Air, Water Aotearoa (www.lawa.org.nz), alongside data from other regions.

District councils inform the public of the current health status at individual swimming spots according to national guidelines and the results of the Taranaki Regional Council’s monitoring. The district councils list the status of popular swimming spots on their websites and use signs at each swimming spot to advise people if it’s currently safe to swim.

Mr Bedford says regardless of the latest monitoring results, any swimming spot or beach can be unsuitable to swim at from time to time and strongly advises people not to swim for at least three days after heavy or prolonged rainfall.

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