On The Nation: Lisa Owen interviews Lawrence Yule and Mike Joy

Youtube clips from the show are available here.

Headlines:

• District Health Board alerted senior DHB and Hastings District Council staff at 12:53pm on August 12 of possible contamination of Havelock North but Mayor Yule wasn’t informed until 2:30pm, and public weren’t notified until early evening

• DHB was aware of positive test for campylobacter at rest home, and up to 15 people seeking help from local pharmacy for vomiting and diarrhoea

• Yule concedes council could have done better job of alerting public

• Yule doesn’t believe mushroom farm near the bore is source of contamination

• Massey University’s Mike Joy says central government has been “out of the room” when it comes to dealing with dairy intensification and the potential impact on nation’s water quality

Lisa Owen: Well, it has been the week from hell for residents of Havelock North. Half of the area’s households have been struck down with a gastric illness — a total of 4000 people. One of those was 80-year-old Jean Sparksman, who died a week ago. Now, the source of the illness is campylobacter, believed to be caused by cattle, sheep or deer faecal matter in two Havelock North water bores. Well, joining me now is Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule. Mr Yule, the latest is that the contamination is likely from cow, sheep or deer faecal matter. How did it get in the bore? Where is it coming from?

Lawrence Yule: Lisa, we have no idea. So the test results we got last night indicated it was unlikely to come from poultry sources and more likely to be from the sources you’ve outlined. It is a complete mystery as I sit here today as to how it’s got into the bores. Because the tests take two days, so we’re now Saturday, but as on Thursday morning, the test that was done, as I understand it, was still testing positive for E. coli in both of those bores. So whatever is in the aquifer is still there.

So you’ve still got an active contamination, basically?

Yes.

All right. I want to talk about how this has been managed, because there’s been a lot of discussion about it. A senior local leader told The Nation that the council’s handling of this incident is ‘an unmitigated f-ing disaster,’ and said that the council is way out of its league. Are you way out of your league? Have you been through this?

No, I don’t believe so. I think we’ve acted very responsibly. We’ve used the right information, and we’ve made pretty quick decisions. For example, the whole of the Havelock North community was chlorinated by 8pm last Friday. They officially decided to chlorinate that at 3 o’clock that afternoon. And my staff worked all through the night flushing chlorine through the system. So, actually, while the contamination and people were getting sick for some time before that, when we actually realised what was going on, the reaction was very, very swift.

Okay, well, let’s look at this in more detail. We’ve got a bar graph here which is from authorities which show the number of people getting sick. Let’s take a look at that. You would be familiar with that, I’m sure. So as you can see, early Monday August the 8th, so that’s Monday morning, there are higher levels, a real cluster of people are starting to get sick. Yet it takes five days until Friday before any action is taken.

That’s because on the Tuesday when the test was taken, it came back as negative. If we’d known on the Tuesday we’d got a positive test, we probably would’ve done something much more about it then, but we had a negative test. There was nothing to suspect—

So what went wrong? Why was that test negative?

We don’t know. That will part of the investigation. I mean, this is a standard testing methodology used right throughout New Zealand. It came back as a negative test. It was only on Friday, because what we did was test on Tuesday and again on Thursday. On Friday morning, we had an indicator test. It said something looks suspicious. 70% of those indicator tests come back as false positives. So in other words, there’s never anything there. So on Friday morning, we said we’ve got an indicator test, then the Ministry of Health— sorry, the DHB contacted us just before 1 o’clock and said we’ve got a number of people getting ill, and we put two and two together.

Okay. Well, let’s look at that in some detail. You have released a trail of emails to The Nation that show a little bit of who knew what and when. So we’re going to look at these in a bit of a detail. So if we can bring that trail up. The morning of Friday the 12th, we know that there was a positive E. coli test.

A positive indicator test.

An indicator test, yeah. Hastings District Council notified the DHB of that test. Emails show that the DHB knew that morning that a rest home had a resident with a positive campylobacter test. They also knew that up to 15 people had visited one pharmacy for vomiting and diarrhoea and none of those people were related, and that the hospital also had at that point multiple cases present to the hospital. Now, all of this was outlined in an email that was sent at 12.53 by the DHB manager to multiple senior council and DHB officials. There was an outbreak meeting scheduled at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and at 2.30 an email goes to the mayor, you. You’re looped in to an email saying you have a public health problem. But here’s the thing. The first public notification is at 6.40 on Friday night on the DHB website. Right?

The DHB or on our website. I’m not sure.

So why did it take so long, given that they had all of this evidence in the morning before they sent the email at 12.53?

So my understanding… I don’t know why it took so long to get to that point. So I cannot be responsible or do I know the detail around the DHB’s reaction. What I know is I was told at 2.30, and I was told they thought something was going on, and at 4.30 I was also told at the conclusion at that meeting, they decided to chlorinate the water.

Can I just stop you there? Because I think this is important. You say that you can’t be held responsible for the DHB’s actions. What do you think of the fact that they had all of this information in the morning? And it’s not just one piece of information. It is multiple clues to the fact that you have a significant problem.

I hadn’t heard in that much detail until what you’ve just told me. So I know they’d released the details to you. I haven’t read all that detail. But I’d say this. That will all be part of the inquiry. I think the important thing is to realise that we know how to deal with water-borne illness, and the first thing we needed to do was to put chlorine in the water. That began at 5.30, and by 8 o’clock that night, the chlorine had eliminated all the bugs. We were going on a hunch. We didn’t know what the bug was. And then they met and said, ‘Because we don’t know what the bug was, should we issue a water notice?’ That took the DHB, the Ministry of Health officials a while to decide what should we do, because we didn’t want to go out with two levels of information.

Okay, I get that. But this email at 12.53 sent from a DHB senior manager went to the water supply manager at the district council, the environmental health team leader, the infection control officer, the medical officer of health, the medical adviser, the public health doctor, the emergency response adviser, several senior managers in the district council and a public relations person. And you had positive campylobacter tests at that point.

We didn’t have positive campylobacter tests. We had an indicator test for E. coli. We only just- Campylobacter tests take over three days to get back from the sampling, so we had a presence of something, we thought, and I reiterate – those tests are 70% wrong.

The water test, but this shows that residents had already tested positive for campylobacter. Looking at all of this, it looks like someone stuffed up, doesn’t it?

No, I don’t believe so. I think that will all come out in the inquiry as well as to whether it could’ve been done faster and better. I actually believe- One of the things I wasn’t aware of until the next morning was the number of people that have become unwell. When I was told, I was told there was a number of people unwell – not any quan- a few, I was told – and then at 4.30 I was told that the DHB had reali- or thought that the two things were linked.

Did the DHB make a mistake?

No, I don’t believe so.

Did they drag their feet?

You need to ask the DHB that, and the inquiry will do that.

I’m asking you, and you’ve promised transparency. I’m asking you to be transparent about what you think.

Well, based on the lack of knowledge at the time in terms of- We thought it might have been a waterborne disease. There are a number of reasons how people can get campylobacter. You know, you can get it from food, so you can have an outlet where a lot of people are at – can get it from food. We had to trace whether, in fact, the illness was likely to come from water, and that took a little bit of time to do, because you don’t want a public- sorry, panic the public unnecessarily.

But the thing is, I also just want to quickly ask about the notifications. They were passive notifications. They went up on a website. Did you-? Do you not have an alert system in a crisis situation?

They weren’t just passive. So media releases went out. We put stuff on Facebook. I think we could have done things a little bit better at that point – I acknowledge that myself – but I think at 5- after 5.30 on a Friday night, there is no immediate solution. So we don’t have a tech system-

The 6 o’clock news?

No, because they had missed that deadline.

All right. Well, you had- I want to talk about a previous contamination scare, September 2015. Now, that investigation was only completed a couple of days ago. How could you let that drag on so long when that information might have been material to what’s happened now?

Well, first of all, we had three little incidents of E. coli in one of the bores, in bore three. They were chlorinated on two occasions, and within a day, there was no test in those bores any more. So we thought something might have been going on. We closed that bore in October of last year.

But I’m asking you about the investigation. Why did you let it drag on for so long?

When we asked the consultants, one, we didn’t believe the risk was that great, because we turned the bore off; bores one and two, which are supplying Havelock North through this whole time, have never had one positive test in 35 years since they’ve been installed.

Why didn’t you keep chlorinating the bores, then? Without the results of the investigation, why didn’t you chlorinate all the bore- the water from the bores? Was it a money issue?

No, it’s nothing to do with money. The view was this has been a secure supply for 35 years, and there was no reason to indicate there’s ever been a problem with bores one and two.

Okay. Well, the report has said that the earthworks at the mushroom farm may have contributed to the contamination of bore three. Now, the earthworks at that mushroom farm were illegal. They got fined 300 bucks. Are you happy with that?

Well, the- It was illegal, and they were dealt with at the time. I think the interesting thing was-

Are you happy with that? Because that doesn’t seem to reflect in any way the potential consequences of their actions.

We don’t know that there is a potential consequence of their action. There could be, and that’s still subject to investigation. I think the important thing is everybody has gone for that mushroom farm, but the information we received last night, which indicated it is unlikely to be from poultry- And just to explain, mushroom farms use chicken manure to make mushrooms, and the indication last night says that it is unlikely to have come from poultry.

But the report does say by carving out a top layer of soil, you could’ve exposed those bores to contamination.

One bore.

Yeah.

It does say that, but as I say, that’s all part of the investigation. We are not ruling anything in or out. But if you had asked me this question yesterday morning, I would’ve said, ‘Actually, there is a possibility around the mushroom farm.’ After last night’s information around the DNA, which said it’s unlikely to be poultry, I actually believe it’s another source.

Okay. Well, you’re in a situation now where bore three’s closed down; bore one and two are still contaminated. You thought that these were, as you’ve said, secure supplies – clearly they’re not. Where does this leave you?

Well, what we’ve done is we’ve chlorinated the water. We’ve issued a ‘boil water’ notice for Havelock North. By next Friday, we’ll have a UV system put in place for Havelock North people, and chlorination and UV completely eliminate every bug.

All right. Thanks for joining me this morning, Lawrence Yule. Appreciate your time.

Lisa Owen: Well, Havelock North has been the epicentre of this emergency, but it poses some wider questions about the security of drinking water for the entire country, and joining me now to discuss that is Massey University senior lecturer in Ecology Mike Joy. Thanks for joining us this morning. We know that this outbreak has been caused likely by deer, cow or sheep faeces. What do you think that tells us?

Mike Joy: It tells us that it’s just a symptom of a much bigger picture that’s happening in New Zealand, and it’s not surprising. I mean, this is a big outbreak, so it’s made the news, but people don’t realise. I’m sure most New Zealanders don’t realise that we have the highest rates in the OECD or in the developed world of these gastro diseases that come from animals. And so we may never find the cause of this, but we can go to places like Canterbury and we can look at the huge increases that have happened. So we’ve got the highest rates in the world in New Zealand, or in the developed world, and then the highest rates in New Zealand are in Canterbury, where there’s lots of intensive farming and lots of water taking from shallow bores.

So do you think it’s agricultural intensification, it’s farming intensification? Is there any doubt in your mind?

There’s no doubt in Canterbury that that is the cause. There’s no doubt where you take water from shallow bores. And in this case, it’s coming back – the DNA’s looking like it’s coming from ruminants. So in this particular case, we may never know and it may not be, but in general the problem that we have, the reason that we have the highest in the world is because we’ve intensified without ever trying to control it. There’s just been this free-for-all, and now the chickens— well, whatever is coming home to roost for us, you know, for failures in the past.

Because the thing is, Health Minister Jonathan Coleman, he doesn’t think that this qualifies as a water emergency, what’s happened at Havelock North – 4000 sick people. I mean, how would you characterise or describe it?

If that’s not an emergency, I would like to know what is. But, I mean, that’s a classic in that we’re talking about 4000 people, but actually what gets notified will only be 90 or 100, and it’s the same You know, the notifications give us the highest levels in the developed world, but this is a really good example that what gets notified is only a tiny proportion of the illnesses that are out there.

So you think it’s actually bigger than what we know it to be?

Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure it is, because we know that that’s such a low proportion actually report and even with that low proportion we’re the highest, so, you know…

Do you think the Government’s been slow to respond to this?

In this particular case, no, but I don’t want to comment on this one, but the Government has been out of the room when it comes to allowing— central and local government have just allowed this massive expansion of intensification that’s caused the problems and done nothing about it. So they have failed totally.

And in saying that, obviously this is an issue that’s close to your heart. We like to present ourselves as 100% pure New Zealand. You know, should we be having to chlorinate our water? Should we be able to be drinking it from the tap?

Yes, we definitely should. This is going to be just the best thing ever for the water-bottling companies in New Zealand because now everyone will be worried, and if we do chlorinate all the water supplies in New Zealand, then the bottled-water companies will make a huge fortune out of this. This is a boon for them.

So where does it leave us? What do we have to do? You say that the Government’s response, well, it’s allowed, in your view, rife intensification.

Yeah.

So how do we turn it round? It’s not a five-minute exercise, is it?

No, no, but we have to realise that putting all that crap, you know, in the environment is going to cause problems. We talk about One Health, so a healthy environment, healthy animals and human health all go together. I mean, I guess the best example I could give would be in New York City. You know, a couple of decades ago, they had a water supply problem. They had the choice – you either spend heaps of money upgrading water treatment, putting more chemicals in it and more filtering, or you go to the catchment, and that’s what they did. They went to the catchment; they got rid of animals out of the catchment. They went to growing nuts and planted trees and all that kind of thing, and now they have—

Is that a reasonable expectation in New Zealand?

Yeah, yeah, because it’s an expectation the world has to face, that animals have to come out of agriculture. For greenhouse gas emissions, more than half of the problem comes from ruminant animals. And so the reality is that New Zealand has to face up to it.

But that’s where we make a large proportion of our money from as a country.

Well, I don’t know about that when you get 80% of your farmers having to borrow to stay in business for the last two years, huge sums of money. It keeps being talked about as if it’s really valuable, but no one— When we cost just the very minimum things that we could cost around the impacts of dairy farming, if the industry had to pay to clean up its environmental impact, then it’s a no-sum gain. It’s a lose-lose for the country. So we’re allowing this expansion, we’re allowing these bad things to happen to us to prop up an industry that we say brings in so much money, but it’s only because we don’t make them pay.

Do you think that there’s too much responsibility being placed on local councils, and should the sort of surety of the water supply and the quality of the water supply be something that is central government’s responsibility?

Yeah, I don’t know about that. I mean, yeah, the local councils are trying to do things on a limited budget, and I think you’ll find when they do this inquiry that that money – corners have been cut to keep cheap water. I mean, if you’re only 20 metres down, if you think about the pollution of the landscape, then the bore water, the groundwater starts polluting from the surface down. Over time you find it deeper and deeper and deeper. So if you’re in a shallow bore, same in Canterbury, all the shallow bores are where the bad stuff hits first. It takes a long time to get down to the deep bores, which is where these bottling companies are taking their water from. So we’re giving away water, the cleanest water, to bottling companies to sell us and we’re taking the cheap way, which is at the surface, the ones that are impacted. You know, it’s just such a dumb move. I can’t believe it.

All right, Mike Joy, appreciate your time this morning.

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