Green co-leader Russel Norman took a kayak trip down the Manawatu River on Saturday. he reported it as smelling like burnt sheep and faeces. Two of the culprits are obvious: New Zealand Pharmaceuticals, which has resource consent to dump 240 cubic metres a day of chemical waste into the river, and Palmerston North City Council, which has permission to dump 42,000 cubic metres of treated sewage. But they're not the only problem. In addition to the easily identifiable point sources (which also include the Tui brewery in Mangitinoka - yes, students, you're pissing in our river), there's also a large amount of farm runoff, which loads the river with cowshit and fertiliser. As a result, it is officially one of the most polluted rivers in the western world.
The reason this has happened is that we have had a regional council which has ignored the problem, or seen the degraded state of the river as an excuse to allow more pollution (on the basis that "it can't do any more harm") rather than clean it up. The people of Palmerston North have made it very clear that we will no longer tolerate this, and change seems to be coming. But it is happening at a glacial pace, and it is unlikely to satisfy voters, who want a river they can swim in and eat out of again. And with local body elections this year, things could get interesting.
(Unfortunately, not everyone seems to be onboard with cleaning up the river. Palmerston North mayor Jono Naylor excused the city's pouring of treated sewage into the river by saying that its only between 0.3% and 1.5% of the total flow. "Palmerston North: our river is only 1.5% sewage" makes a great slogan for the city, doesn't it?)
The policies needed to control water pollution are well known: tight control of point sources, requiring them to pre-process their waste to render it harmless, plus controls on farms to reduce overstocking and overuse of fertiliser. The council seems to slowly be moving towards this. But it needs to move faster, and if it doesn't, we should de-elect them and get people who will.
