Lake Horowhenua may be exempt from new freshwater standards

Wednesday, 8 July 2020

Philip Taueki talks through the struggle to restore Lake Horowhenua to its former healthy state. (First published December, 2019)

One of New Zealand’s most polluted lakes is set to be exempt from new freshwater standards, with Environment Minister David Parker saying there is no feasible fix.

Lake Horowhenua on the outskirts of Levin is notorious for its poor water quality, with algal blooms regularly covering much of the water during summer.

The water is so toxic a Niwa scientist said in 2012 a small child could die if enough was swallowed.

Muaūpoko considers the lake a significant taonga because it used to be a source of kai for the iwi.

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Many iwi members’ remains are on the bed of the lake, victims of a massacre by Te Rauparaha of Ngāti Toa and his forces in the 1820s.

Lake Horowhenua, pictured in December, is extremely polluted due to stormwater, wastewater and farm runoff.

Those remains are covered in sediment and weeds.

Horowhenua District Council used to pump wastewater into the lake.

It still puts stormwater into the lake, despite never having a resource consent to do so, and has applied to continue doing this.

The area is surrounded by farms, with the wider area growing 30 per cent of the country’s fresh leafy greens, but the nitrogen runoff makes its way to the lake.

The Waitangi Tribunal found in 2017 the Crown had breached Te Tiriti o Waitangi by being complicit in the pollution and environmental degradation of the lake.

Parker, who was in Levin on Tuesday to speak to farmers, councillors and Muaūpoko members, said there was a proposal to exempt the lake and some surrounding waterways from the new freshwater standards.

Environment Minister David Parker says “the best will in the world” will not get Lake Horowhenua to the freshwater standards being applied across the rest of the country.

Those standards, announced in May, significantly reduced the cap for nutrients in waterways.

Lake Horowhenua would not be able to meet the cap for nitrogen, even if dairy farming and horticulture in the area was reduced by 40 per cent, Parker said.

“The standard couldn’t be achieved here, even with the best will in the world.”

That view lines up with comments from Horizons Regional Council freshwater manager Logan Brown, who has told Stuff it would take 99 years for the lake to be healthy again if all human activity around it stopped immediately.

The outlet of a sediment trap into Lake Horowhenua, pictured in December.

Parker said horticulture needed to continue in the area, because the food produced was essential for human health.

The exemption would not mean carte blanche pollution of the lake though, with improving its health still a requirement.

One aspect of that was announced on Sunday as part of the “jobs for nature” project, in which $11.2 million is going towards wetlands and sediment traps in the wider area to reduce the amount of nitrogen entering the lake.

Horowhenua mayor Bernie Wanden said that announcement was great, but only a first step.

People needed to work together if they wanted the lake’s health to improve, as it was likely to get more funding from central government if there was a united front.

“This is not an overnight process.”

Changing rules to protect Horowhenua’s vegetable production is nothing new.

Horizons is working through changing its environmental rulebook, the One Plan, because almost no Horowhenua growers can meet the nitrogen leeching targets.

That has left about 60 growers unable to get resource consents for their operations.

Applying the rules as they are would shrink vegetable production by 64 per cent and GDP by 1.4 per cent.

That plan change process is ongoing.