By Dr. Peter Trolove
immediate past president NZ Federation Freshwater Anglers

An opinion piece in the "FARMERS WEEKLY" July 8, 2024 by Gord Stewart, a sustainability consultant was titled “We have to get serious about nitrates” in which he wrote “Independent Kiwi scientists suggest that some 800,000 New Zealanders have water supplies with potentially hazardous nitrate levels. Rural residents on bore water supplies are particularly at risk —An oft-cited Danish study reported in 2018 followed 2.7 million people over a 23 year period—found an increase in colorectal cancer risk—the same analysis said that nitrate could be attributable to an additional 100 colorectal cancer cases a year and 40 deaths in New Zealand -“ Gord Stewart’s article is pretty balanced.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the extreme views held by the leaders of Federated Farmers and the current Coalition Government.

These leaders are letting themselves, farmers, and the country down by sticking to spiel rather than science.

I live in Central Canterbury and have made an effort to learn about the uncontrolled nitrate leaching that is occurring in my district of Selwyn.

Apart from assembling and reading a mass of peer reviewed literature as well as press articles, I have spent the last four years conducting my own monthly nitrate tests across the lower Selwyn water Zone.

My results confirm that the senior managers at the Canterbury Regional Council, (Ecan), are under reporting just how serious the nitrate pollution has become. Because you do not have the means to manage a problem should not give you license to “manage the story”.

Ecan reports their nitrate monitoring as 5 years means. They have inadequate monitoring sites where high nitrate result are likely to be present. The “reductions” in nitrate leaching Ecan promotes are modelled reductions which have little connection to reality.

In essence Ecan are feeding ratepayers “tobacco science”.

In a 2023 paper, Dr Bryan Jenkins stated that the natural capital of Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere may be beyond recovery due to the ineffective and delayed responses by Ecan.

Hardly surprising when with Ecan oversight the Selwyn Water Zone Committee adopted a (non enforced) “bottom line” for nitrate in their rivers of 8.5 mg/L NO3-N.

Sadly two major groundwater connected rivers I monitor regularly exceed this “bottom line”.

The Canterbury nitrate story in a nutshell

In response to a 1998 drought, the Ministry for the Environment and MAF with the help of a Wellington PR firm established a “steering committee” of irrigators and business interests to develop the Canterbury Strategic Water Study. The name was later changed to the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) which is sponsored by the Canterbury Mayoral Forum to give it a veneer of legitimacy. The pragmatic decision was made not to consult with environmentalist or consider the fate of Canterbury’s lowland rivers and lagoons during the development of the CWMS.

There was no attempt to address the economic inequity of awarding the regions’ freshwater to farmers.

The non-notified CWMS was given statutory authority and primacy over critical parts of the RMA 1991 through the enactment of the Environment Canterbury (temporary commissioners) and improved water management Act 2010.

The Ecan Act enabled the government to run Ecan for a decade in order to massively increase the area of irrigated land in Canterbury.

In essence this was a pragmatic FAST-TRACK device designed to circumvent existing environmental protections.

Farmer buy in was purchased with the $435 million irrigation enhancement fund.

The newly irrigated land lent itself to industrial farming notably large dairy herds on light porous soils known to be vulnerable to nitrate leaching which indeed took place.

Ecan issued the necessary consents to use massive amounts of river and groundwater for irrigation and to discharge pollutants onto land without the regulations or means to manage the inevitable nitrate leaching.

Irrigation consents and consents to discharge onto land have become de facto “property rights” to be traded among water users. The large irrigation schemes hold single consents, the rights to these consents are divided into irrigation scheme shares. These can be reallocated or traded.

The Rakaia River National Water Conservation Order 1988 was amended under the term of the government appointed commissioners to take an additional 70 cubic meters of water / second from the once protected Rakaia River. This additional water is conjured under the non consented Lake Coleridge Project where a subjective 350 million cubic meters of “warehouse stored water” is somehow held and recovered from the inaccessible level of Lake Coleridge for sale to contracted irrigation schemes. Manawa Energy will continue to profit from this device for as long as Ecan turns a blind eye.

The values of the Rakaia River are no longer protected by the WCO.

Fast-Track Approvals Version II

The present Coalition Government is presently attempting to apply the Ecan pilot across the whole of New Zealand by adopting the strategies used by the John Key National government in Canterbury from 2010 to 2019; Ignore science, enact under urgency fact-track legislation to achieve pragmatic economic gains disregarding the loss of natural capital for future generations.

“Expert independent commissioners” now have little credibility with cynical Canterbury residents who are left to decide whether to accept bowel cancer, premature babies, and “blue babies” due to methaemoglobinaemia or pay for costly filters to remove nitrate from their drinking water.

Polluting a region’s groundwater is not a property right. Many would argue that with rights come responsibilities.

Regulations whether “green” or “red” are the only means to attempt to manage this wanton pollution.

Ironically Canterbury ratepayers fund 80% of the cost of the consents that Ecan issues so farmers may profit from the use of pristine public water and return it to groundwater in a polluted state.

It is far from reassuring that the consents are largely “self-monitored”

The Select Committee Process.

The select committee process is the time between the first and second reading of Bill where there is a cross party effort to consider the wider implications of proposed legislation.

Normal democratic convention allow the public to have their say in the form of submissions.

Unfortunately for democracy this government is short changing its citizens by gaming the submission process through restricting both the time to prepare, write and speak to a Bill under impossible time constraints. Citizens are being treated with contempt.

Two executive member of the NZFFA experienced first hand how badly the submission process can be abused when they attempted to make a submission to the RMA Amendment (freshwater and other matters) Bill.

The Primary Production Select Committee, i.e. the Primary Production Subcommittee 'B' of Miles Anderson, Jo Luxton and James Meager, on 9 July, spent their time turning this important piece of the democratic process into a circus.

These three South Canterbury National Party MPs decided not to take the submission process seriously but instead used the opportunity to fire cheap questions at numerous informed and concerned submitters to score points in an unfair setting where the rogue ministers controlled the "talking stick".

Clearly they did not want videos of the submissions to reveal just how badly Canterbury's freshwater pollution has become. The unchecked and uncontrolled nitrate pollution of the groundwater beneath Central Canterbury is neither "pragmatic" nor a "property right". It is the direct consequence of the John Key National Government's constitutionally repugnant Ecan Act 2010 and the Ministry for the Environment and MPI's inspired "Fast-Track" Canterbury Water Management Strategy.

Facts and science should not be countered by ignorance, bullying, or theatre, as was the experience of the two NZFFA executive members who attempted to make a submission on the Bill yesterday.

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