Who will clean it up? We can all do it – together

A new partnership approach to resource management is the best way to clean up the natural resources of the Wellington region, says the chair of the Greater Wellington Regional Council, Fran Wilde.

“While many of our rivers and streams are in good health, including the Hutt River, it’s no secret that our extensive regional resource monitoring is finding that some of our natural resources – including water - are increasingly under pressure.

“Stormwater pollution, subdivision silt and runoff from farms and industry have affected water quality right through the region, while more demand for water is putting stress on rivers, streams and aquifers.

“There’s significant room to improve how we manage our natural resources, but it’s not something the regional council can do in isolation. Experience has made it clear that active community support is just as necessary as regulation.

“The story on the front page of today’s Dominion Post was perfect timing in that we are about to embark on a radical new approach to our natural resource planning, with community workshops throughout the region rolling out in a couple of weeks’ time.

“This is a complete reversal of the traditional way of undertaking resource planning, which is for the Council to develop a draft then release it for comment. We want to work with community and interest groups to build the new regional plan from the bottom up.

“Through our workshops we’ll be actively seeking ideas from people in all parts of the region on what they value in their local and regional environment, and we will use that information, together with the scientific evidence from our extensive monitoring programmes, to identify key ways for regional resources to be managed,” Fran Wilde says.

“No ones wants to see images like that on the cover of today’s Dominion Post. However, designing ever-more stringent regulations is simply not a sufficient response. While the regulatory framework is inexorably getting tougher, and is a necessary underpinning of any improvement, it is the active support of communities and industries that will really make a difference to our natural environment.

“I urge any Wellingtonians who want to be part of this new initiative to come along to a workshop or register your interest through our web survey.” See www.gw.govt.nz/valuing-our-environment

Hutt River water quality

Hutt River is a large free running river which generally has excellent water quality – for a city river it is very clean and is less affected by urban runoff than other streams such as Porirua Stream and Kaiwharawhara Stream.

Greater Wellington monitors the Hutt River at three places – Te Marua, Boulcott and Manor Park.
In the 2008/09 year all three sites recorded excellent water quality for dissolved oxygen, water claity, E.Coli, and nutrients.

Monitoring also shows that macro invertebrate health in the river is excellent.

People generally do not need to be concerned about swimming in the river, however, Greater Wellington always advises people not to swim after heavy rain, when nutrients and pollutants can be washed from the land

During summer months the Hutt River, like many other New Zealand rivers, has growths of toxic blue green algae, which can be fatal to dogs and make humans sick. Greater Wellington monitors toxic algal growth in the Hutt and other rivers and warns the public if there is any risk

Notes on general monitoring

Greater Wellington undertakes comprehensive environmental monitoring of rivers and streams, groundwater, air, soils, rainfall and river flows, coasts and recreational water quality across the Wellington region.

Freshwater quality in the region's rivers and streams varies from excellent to poor with the better water quality in the hill catchments and the poorest in lowland urban or rural areas.

Monitoring allows us to observe and interpret trends or changes in environmental quality and determine the reasons for these, and have good information for guiding resource consent decision making.

Monitoring also enables us to evaluate how effective our current policies and plans are, and where changes may be necessary, and to tell the wider community about the state of our natural resources – air, waterways, soils, coasts and biodiversity.

We report on the results of our monitoring annually to provide a regional picture of the state of our natural resources, one that is more comprehensive than the national summaries released by the Ministry for the Environment.

For our environmental reporting see www.gw.govt.nz/Environmental-report-cards. More detailed annual summaries can be found at http://www.gw.govt.nz/Annual-monitoring-reports/

For more about how you can help improve water quality see the sustainability tips in the latest Our Region magazine - http://www.gw.govt.nz/sustainability-tips-8/