The Waihou River is one of the three most polluted in New Zealand, according to the Ministry for the Environment. While at the top it is so pristine that the water is bottled and sold to fools, at the bottom it is filthy, polluted, and stinking of shit. The problem is obvious to anyone. Except, of course, Federated Farmers, who believe the river is "pristine and unpolluted".
As I said the other day, what we are facing here is complete and utter denial from farmers about their toxic environmental effects. That's entirely expected - after all, like the oil industry, their livelihood depends on destroying the environment and dumping the costs on the rest of us. But we shouldn't accept it. Those are our rivers. And a tiny clique of landed, cow-owning arseholes are destroying them for the rest of us.
It is time we regulated said arseholes into cleaning up their act. And if they can't make a profit cleanly, well, their business was never "profitable" in the first place.