Positive signs on water quality garner negativity

The report on the trends, released in mid-April, should have been cause for celebration – looking back from 2016 at a decade of data showed more sites improving than deteriorating in all river quality parameters. 

These results are consistent with the previous national water quality trend summary based on data from 2004-2013. Both reported more improving trends than degrading trends for total phosphorus, dissolved reactive phosphorus, E. coli, ammoniacal nitrogen and water clarity.  Furthermore, the latest results also show more improving trends than degrading trends for total oxidised nitrogen and total nitrogen, which was not the case in the older dataset.

LAWA said that the latest results provide more positive signs relating to water quality improvements. 

Instead of celebration, however, there have been dire warnings from concerned parties about flawed assessments and poor site selection. No doubt the Ministry for the Environment, Cawthron Institute, Massey University, and all the regional councils who make up LAWA are considering how to do the job with more rigour in future. 

In the meantime, however, the data seem to indicate cause for optimism: all the farmers’ and growers’ efforts -- fencing, planting, building shelters, upgrading effluent disposal and monitoring fertiliser use -- seem to be having an effect. This is just as well; it would have been pretty depressing to have spent the money, estimated by Federated Farmers and Dairy NZ to be a billion dollars on dairy farms alone, for nothing,

LAWA isn’t the only research indicating improvements. Using different sites, ‘recent improvements’ were noted in research involving American geographers and Landcare and NIWA scientists.  The authors also warned about the possible effects of ‘legacy nutrients’ and the potential impact of ongoing increased intensification; the implication was that nobody should sit back and think the job is done.

In biological production systems, the job is never done, and resting on laurels is unusual. Especially this is so in NZ, whose uptake of agricultural technology is envied by many other countries: when the results of research show NZ farmers what they can do to make improvements, they set to and make changes onfarm. 

The cynic might point out that subsidies in other countries buffer against the need for change, whereas in NZ change is a matter of survival; this is valid but doesn’t eliminate the value of the improvements. 

And in any sort of system, people who have done well are keen to do even better. They know that positive statements are more likely to effect change than negative statements, particularly if some suggestions are made about how that change can occur.

A more positive and future-focussed response to the LAWA trends report from concerned parties would have been really good to see the improvements; now what can we do to make the next report even better? Where are the problem areas and what are the likely solutions? How can we help?

Digging into the data reveals that sites reported to be ‘deteriorating’ were mostly doing so from a state of very low nutrients. Encouraging farmers and growers to do even better in retaining nutrients onfarm in these ‘pristine’ catchments is more likely to have a positive effect than berating them with the ‘deteriorating’ label. 

Also of note was that the waterways with the highest nutrient concentration tended to be called a ‘drain’ or ‘creek’. This doesn’t mean they don’t need improvement but it does indicate the issues are not new.

Increasingly clear is that more onfarm research will be needed to assist with the steps towards an even better report from LAWA next time. And more encouragement wouldn’t go amiss either.

• Dr Jacqueline Rowarth has a PhD in soil science and has been analysing agri-environment interaction for several decades.