Water quality results show pleasing improvements

Water quality results show pleasing improvements

Federated Farmers says all the hard work being done to improve our freshwater quality is starting to pay off.

The release of the National River Water Quality Trends by Land, Air, Water Aotearoa (LAWA) show that many more sites are improving than deteriorating for all the river water quality parameters monitored over a 10 year period.

"There are lots of good things going on, both urban and rural, to help improve the quality of our waterways," Federated Farmers water and environment spokesperson Chris Allen says.

"It is very good news. To see that the effort being made is starting to show results."

This data confirms what Feds has seen in other water quality reporting.

The National River Water Quality Trends (2007 - 2016) released by LAWA follows a similar 10 year analysis released in 2015 by National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

Compared with the 2015 report, a change in the trend of nitrogen is particularly noteworthy, with significant progress in the number of improving sites compared with the number that are deteriorating.

"We need to acknowledge that freshwater management processes take time, but these results show that by identifying where action is needed catchment by catchment and working together we can see results.

"We are not there yet and there is more work to do, but it is good to know that the work our communities are doing is making a measurable difference which we are starting to see," Chris says.

ENDS

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