Intensive dairy farming is sucking the Canterbury plains dry. The cost of that? Coes Ford:
A dying Canterbury swimming hole has almost dried up after its flow plummeted to the lowest point in its recorded history.
Coes Ford on the Selwyn River, a once popular camping spot now too polluted for swimming, has hit rock bottom.
The river's flow has dropped by 90 per cent in two months, falling to 9 litres per second on February 6, according to Environment Canterbury (ECan) data.
ECan confirmed it was the lowest flow recorded at the site since records began in 1987.
Canterbury is in a drought at the moment, but it has also had vast quantities of ground water (which the lower Selwyn relies on) sucked out by greedy farmers. Coes Ford shows the cost of that. As for what to do about it, its the Regional Council's job to protect the rivers. But last time they tried, National dissolved them and replaced them with unelected dictators. Now they have a sham democracy with an inbuilt government-appointed farmer majority explicitly designed to prevent any action. And again, the only way of changing that is to change the government...
