Who killed my river? A rant from the editor

[This comment piece first appeared in the 1 December 2015 Green Ideas editor's enews]

I’m pretty upset today and if you don’t mind I’m going to vent a little.

That’s not normal for these newsletters or our magazine (we’re all about what we CAN do to help the environment, not about what we can’t…) so if you’d rather not hear about it I suggest skipping to the end of the email, where there are some beautiful photos of snow leopards…

Still with me? Alright, well what’s REALLY upsetting me this week is this story from the Press explaining how the popular swimming hole known as Coe’s Ford on the Selwyn River is now a repulsive, toxic mess.

Toxic, as in, keep your dog on a lead at all times because the water will kill them. Toxic, as in people are posting pictures on Facebook of chemical burns they got from wading in the water…

I’m absolutely gutted.

Of course rivers belong to everyone – but in a way I felt like this was MY river. Our family went camping there when we were kids. My dad taught us how to bob for eels in it (I have these sleepy memories of being up late as a wee fella, peering into the water with a torch). Later as a teenager I would go swimming there with my friends. Then there was that summer that I taught myself to fly fish for trout in its lower pools…

The photo above is how the river used to look. But now no one else will form memories like that on the Selwyn, because - to put it bluntly - it’s dead.

So what killed it?

The short answer is: dairy farming.

And the long answer is really quite long – so I’ll summarise.

The health warning on the river – don’t touch it, don’t drink it, keep your dogs on a lead – is due to high levels of cyanobacteria - also known as blue/green algae. These produce a variety of toxins that can kill you in some really exciting ways.

These algal outbreaks happen when there’s not enough water in the river to flush it clean, and there’s too much fertiliser run-off from farms.

Both of these are happening in Canterbury, where the Selwyn flows, because dairy farmers are ‘intensifying’ – running more cows, taking more water to irrigate, and using more fertiliser to grow the grass to feed them.

So basically the Selwyn River is dead because it got turned into money.

And this was no accident – it has been a matter of deliberate policy by those in power. I don’t want to go in to it too deeply because I can actually feel my scalp prickling in anger right now (and there’s not much hair up there to prickle), so I’ll just illustrate this with two points:

The National Government’s stated policy is to double primary sector (eg agricultural) exports by 2025.

In line with that policy, five years ago the democratically elected board of Environment Canterbury was sacked by the Government for not handling the region’s freshwater allocations properly (translation: they weren’t granting enough resource consents to farmers to take water).

They were replaced with government appointees who made sure that farmers got the water that they wanted. This is quite a weird situation in a democracy, and the Government is still dragging its feet on letting Cantabrians decide how they want their own rivers managed.

Everybody knew what this approach would mean for rivers up and down the country – the Government has had loads of warnings from sensible experts but has pushed ahead anyway.

And yes, this is where anyone who is farming should point out the huge effort that has gone into cleaning up dairying lately – plus the work of groups like the Land and Water Forum. Which is all awesome.

Just not awesome enough to save my river.

So – here’s the bit where I need your input. A lot of our readers are in rural areas. A lot of you have real hands-on experience with this stuff. So please – throw your ideas into the pot and help us work out what the hell we should do.

• Is it time to boycott dairy products?
• Should we buy organic milk to support the best operators?
• Should there be a compulsory star-rating system on farms, linking their pollution levels to the pay-out they get for their milk?
• Should there be a moratorium on converting land into dairy farms?

I want YOUR ideas – because I’m sick of grizzling and feeling angry – I want to DO something.