PRESS RELEASE

NZ OUTDOORS PARTY

16:00, 28 APRIL 2017

EUROPEAN UNION HAS BETTER SWIMMABLE WATER STANDARDS

The NZ Outdoors Party, who formed in 2015 to protect the rights of Kiwis to enjoy our outdoors heritage, today submitted their response to the Government’s Clean Water proposals. A central theme of the submission was highlighting that Nick Smith’s swimmable water standards were lower than that of the European Union.

Outdoors Party Co-Leader, David Haynes, said in a statement today that ”The EU is a post-industrial economic powerhouse with 15 times the land area, 113 times the population, 7.5 times the population density and 4 times the number of dairy cattle compared to New Zealand. It has been settled by humans for at least 60,000 years longer than Aotearoa and YET their e.coli limit for swimmable water is better than ours – 500 versus our 540 units per 100ml water.”

Haynes continued “There could be no better indication of how unambitious Smith’s proposed standards are. This Government continues to subsidise mega-irrigation schemes for supersized intensive corporate farming operations and makes the public pay to clean up the resultant pollution. Small family farming operations are suffering as is our right to enjoy swimming, fishing and gathering food from our river. Our heritage is being sacrificed for short-term gain and until this pollution subsidy is addressed, along with setting environmental limits to economic and population growth, then swimmable water is just empty rhetoric.

The Outdoors Party policy on our freshwater is Keep freshwater fresh, keep our rivers and lake full, protect the natural character and life of waterbodies, water is free and belongs to everyone and polluters will pay.

ENDS

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