Water quality proposals just a drop in the bucket

Monday, 10 July 2017

ANALYSIS: Over the past week, two vastly different organisations made freshwater announcements that may be more similar than each would care to admit.

One of them was corporate giant Fonterra, which pledged a greater role in addressing water quality by helping communities restore damaged waterways.

The other was the Green Party, which unveiled part of its much-awaited water policy with a proposed levy on bottled water.

Both ideas are admirable and will do some good. But they're also two solitary drops in a quickly overflowing bucket.

* Warnings over four South Canterbury waterways

* Risk of more waterway problems after Port Hills fires

* No longer swimmable: A community mourns its lost river

* Is this Christchurch's most plastic-polluted beach?**

Fonterra chief executive Theo Spierings said the company would help clean up 50 freshwater catchments, expanding its current efforts in five waterways.

'We acknowledge we have an important role to play in addressing water quality in New Zealand,' he said. 'Kiwis want swimmable waterways and that's an aspiration we share.'

He rightly pointed out that many farmers want swimmable rivers too, and the industry had a responsibility to contribute.

But what he announced was a commitment to clean up freshwater – a distinct difference from 'addressing' water quality.

If you consider a bull loose in a china shop, clumsily smashing plates into tiny shards across the floor, most would resolve the situation in the same way: they'd lead the bull out the door before fetching the dustpan.

To clean up freshwater without addressing the causes of pollution in the first place – in rural areas it's often volume-driven intensive farming – is to try and sweep up the shards between the bull's legs.

To illustrate this, one can look at Canterbury's Lake Ellesmere, where Fonterra already funds restoration work around the LII river, one of many polluted tributaries flowing into the lake.

It can take decades for nitrates to seep through the soil and into waterways, due to what is called the 'lag effect'.

When the Central Plains Water irrigation scheme was approved, the hearing commissioners said the lake's nitrogen levels would increase by at least 35 per cent in the coming decades due to the lag effect.

It will take a hugely ambitious clean up effort just to keep pace with the coming pollution, let alone resolve it. Cleaning up the entire lake will cost hundreds of millions over several generations.

That's one lake. Expand that to other waterways and you quickly hit the limits of what clean ups can accomplish.

Shortly after Fonterra's announcement, the Greens proposed a 10 cent levy on bottled water at their campaign launch in Nelson.

Few would argue the absurdity of the status quo: large companies, often in competition with public water supplies, effectively on-selling a resource they claim for nothing.

By the Greens' own admission, the policy would recoup just under $3 million with the amount of water currently being exported.

Some of the companies doing so – such as Coca-Cola and Frucor – are multi-nationals worth billions.

It would become $2.3 billion if all water consented for bottling was exported, the Greens said, but that won't happen. The largest consented take by far in New Zealand is Okuru Enterprises on the West Coast, which has been trying to export water for decades without success.

To their credit, the Greens also committed to coming up with a pricing mechanism for all commercial water takes, including much bigger users such as irrigators.

But in the behemoth of an issue that is freshwater, their headline policy targeted the tiny volume of water being exported.

Neither group proposes these as complete solutions, but the freshwater issue is huge and multifaceted; those hoping to address it will need to do better than drops in the bucket. They may need to consider kicking the bucket over.