Express message

Thanks very much to the Southland Express for the invitation to write their 'Opinion' this week. I've posted the piece below. Apologies for the size - 349 words!

Pity the poor rivers of Southland. Everything, it seems, ends up in them. If you likened our river systems to the veins in your body, you’d be worried about your health right now. Not only are our fluid levels low but we’re gluggy with waste and our bacteria count is dangerously high. Call the doctor. Gastroenteritis is no fun. We could pipe drinking water across the plains from a clean lake, but accepting that we’ve made our rivers open drains won’t solve the broader issue of the health of our environment. Can we do anything about it? Yes we can.

The problem is that our farms and towns are leaking. Cow muck and synthetic fertilizer from farms, fuel residue off the roads and streets of our towns and embarrassingly, our own sewerage at various stages of treatment, dribble largely unseen into our rivers.

But we can fix these problems. We can install natural filters between us, the makers of the muck, and the rivers.

Natural environments like forests and grasslands have inbuilt filters that absorb leaking nutrients. Wetlands clean up dirty water before it reaches the rivers or the sea. When we add these natural systems to our towns and farms we’ll solve the problem of our polluted rivers.

We could help out further by not using synthetic products that natural systems can’t process. Oil based fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides do much of the harm. There are better ways to treat Southland soils than liberally dosing them with imported oil products.

Many Southland organic farms have developed living soils that filter their nutrients, so there is little, if any, run-off, easing the burden on the rivers. These farms are the model for our future as a successful agricultural region. Our towns too can filter storm water and sewerage through cleverly designed wetlands, cleaning the water before it gets to the rivers. It’s being done successfully in other parts of New Zealand and around the world and it will work here in Southland. Let’s make the change, for the sake of our rivers.