Roman Travers: If Govts really wanted to make change, our waterways would already be improving

I measure the quality of the summer season by how many swims I have, this summer I managed just one swim.

Not my proudest tally, I can assure you. 

But that sad tally was only diminished by my inability to make time. Being able to find clean water to swim in will increasingly prove to be the main barrier.

The environment, Minister David Parker says, some of the statistics I’m about to mention are an indictment on the country and an intergenerational challenge to turn around.  

45 percent of lake monitoring sites worsened between 2011 and 2020 with just 36 percent improving.

45 of New Zealand’s total river length is non swimmable due to risk of bacterial infection. 

48 percent of our river network is at least partially inaccessible to migratory fish. 

About two thirds of freshwater native bird species were either threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened in 2021. 

Minister David Parker is entirely correct. It’s an intergenerational problem that we have largely turned our back to, and yet we should collectively be ashamed of having a get to this stage.  

This is both a rural and an urban issue, but to put things in perspective, dairy cattle numbers have increased by 82 percent from 3.4 million to 6.4 million between 1990 and 2019.  

Successive governments have wrung their hands, grimaced like well-paid actors and paid lip service to wanting change; but if they really wanted to change things, then things would be improving across all our waterways. 

It’s not a question of attributing blame and adding to the futile flurry of finger pointing.

Like any waste water testing - this is about determining what’s in the water that shouldn’t be there and going to the source to prevent further degradation of what were once pristine swimming holes and environments for many aquatic species.

So me quantifying swims each summer is something I still plan to maintain.  

Finding lakes and rivers clean enough to increase the tally may prove to be increasingly difficult. 

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