It's all about water

The Green Party are first out of the blocks in the political race in Southland, taking today's front page of The Southland Times with a feature on the Waituna Lagoon and their plans to save it from destruction. Green MP Kevin Hague was at the lagoon yesterday, along with Invercargill Green candidate Dave Kennedy and Environment Southland CEO Ciaran Keogh, to see the lagoon  up close, meet the scientists working there and hear from those most closely involved in the work that's being done now to save it. Mr Hague wasted no time in declaring what he believed his party would do following a successful election and showed that the Greens are supportive of the farmers who are committed to farming in the catchment, and aware that central government has an obligation to sort out the issue.
The article by Alex Fensome is here and this extract represents some of the useful observations the Green MP made. The National and Labour candidates of the area will need to pull their socks up and get busy, or the Greens will trump them again and again, on the issue of water and its quality!
(Mr Hague) believed destocking was needed in order to reduce the levels of nitrate and phosphorous flowing into the lagoon, although the farmers themselves had not been at fault.
"Farmers involved here have been complying 100 per cent with the consents they were originally given. It's not that they are breaking rules but the rules were wrong in the first place," he said. "They have done nothing wrong."
However, much more was now known about the impact of intensive farming on fragile ecosystems such as Waituna Lagoon and the situation now required urgent action from the Government, he said.
Farms that had to destock would be compensated by the Crown, he said. "There needs to be some kind of compensative package and the logical place for that to come from is central government. "A lot of these guys have massive capital investments [in their farms]."