Hatea River campaign carries on environmental baton

A campaign to clean up Whangarei's Hatea River is continuing the good work of environmentally-minded Northlanders who have long fought for quality water in this river.

In 2008, a journalist started a public campaign by cutting a small advertisement out of the Northern Advocate and querying whether a figure of 24,000 cubic metres in the ad was correct.

That is how much untreated sewage the Northland Regional Council was permitting the Whangarei District Council to discharge into the Whangarei Harbour annually.

It turned out that one of the main sources of harbour pollution was run-off via the Hatea River.

Pollution sources included animal faeces upstream that washed downstream in heavy rain, and human waste from the Kensington area getting into stormwater systems, again, during heavy rain.

There was a public uproar over the pollution, championed by the Northern Advocate and led by the Whangarei Alliance, a group representing hapu which have a treaty claim over the harbour.

The people spoke through the Save The Harbour campaign and, funnily enough, the Whangarei District Council listened.

Since 2008, millions of dollars has been spent on upgrading our sewage treatment system, and on direct "anti-pollution" projects such as the massive holding tanks built in Whareora Rd that allow polluted water to be diverted away from the Hatea River, and treated before it can be put back into the environment.

This latest push to improve the Hatea River's water quality comes from TogetherTahi and carries on the baton of earlier campaigns.

It makes it clear that "near-enough" is not good enough. What else can be done to get the river to a point where there is little risk of contamination from swimming in it?

The ultimate swimming environment, in other words.