Water, one of the elements most essential to life, is now getting the attention it deserves after a flurry of national and international reports condemning the state of our waterways. New Zealand is abundantly blessed with water, but we haven't looked after it well, and that fact is now coming back to bite us.
Tourism, which relies on our 'clean green' image, has just overtaken dairy as New Zealand's single biggest earner. It is perversely ironic that dairy, especially the intensive variety, is a significant cause of the degradation of water quality in our rivers, lakes and estuaries, some of the very things that attract tourists here in the first place.
The impacts of this are wider than just foreign exchange earnings; it is threatening our quality of life in a number of ways. Is what you're drinking fresh, or has it been made clean by ample doses of chlorine? What exactly is 'swimmable?' What of all the things that live there, our native fish and invertebrates?
The answers are challenging. Seventy-two per cent of our native fish are threatened with extinction, as are 33 per cent of our freshwater plants and invertebrates. (No more whitebait fritters). Many Kiwis are finding their shellfish polluted by extreme E coli levels, making them dangerous to eat.
The blame game doesn't help either, with farmers and urbanites pointing the finger at each other.
