Peter Beaven: A mish-mash of mixed messages

Councillor Peter Beaven.

It hasn't been much fun this past week or two living in a third-world village on the Heretaunga Plains with a suspect water supply.

Non-Havelock North residents won't have experienced the thousand ways this affects daily living. Cleaning your teeth with water from a bottle. Remembering not to fill the dog bowl from the tap. Not rinsing a tea cup or pot in the sink " my wife finally taped up the tap to remind me.

Later she went to the local supermarket and returned with cake and biscuits from the bakery. I asked her what she knew about the source of water they were mixed with. Neither of us was prepared to risk eating them. They sit still in the pantry.

The Government has announced an inquiry. It is likely to take a precautionary approach and decide that all communities in the future will be required to chlorinate their water supply.

Chlorinating is to admit defeat " it's the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. More important is to come up with measures to restore and protect the aquifer. One of the very nice things about living in Hawke's Bay, until now, has been the quality of the filtered but untreated water. If we can safely maintain this we should. But it will take some hard work and a change in our thinking.

So what are the lessons from the past week? First is the need for more comprehensive information from our ill-prepared health professionals.

There has been a lack of any useful advice from the Ministry of Health or local health authorities on what we Havelock North residents should have been doing. Other than boiling water, no instructions have been forthcoming. But boil for how long? I rang the health hotline two different times and got two different answers. One nurse said boil the water twice. The other said once is enough.

What about washing dishes in tap water? The same inconclusive advice. One said they were safe once washed with detergent. The other said they weren't safe unless it was boiling water.

Neither could tell me whether the cake and biscuits were safe to eat.

So two calls, two pieces of advice and I am none the wiser.

These are fairly basic questions.

Clearly the health system has been caught on the hop. Their primary responsibility must be to advise families on how to protect themselves. They have been missing in action. A letterbox drop with more detailed information would have helped.

Second, let's show more respect for water. It is the source of both human and economic sustenance. It is an essential part of much of our leisure activity. Good water quality and quantity is essential for ecosystem health. And we have taken it for granted the past hundred years.

All identified sources of water that feed the aquifers of our region need to be as pristine as we can make them.

It is an anathema to many that the regional council seems powerless to prevent untreated or semi-treated discharges from Waipukurau and Waipawa treatment ponds to flow into the Tukituki River with no control over whether they will end up in the aquifer or not.

The cause of the contamination has been identified as ruminants. Tracking down the source might be much harder.

Yet how many times do we see cows wandering in or across our streams and rivers right across the Heretaunga Plains?

Every landowner has a responsibility to reflect on their farm management practices and their short and long-term impacts on the rest of the community.

The key lesson for the future is when it comes to the environment, no one gets a free ride.

- Peter Beaven represents the Ngaruroro Ward on the Hawke's Bay Regional Council and is standing for re-election in the upcoming local government elections. He is also a former CEO of Pipfruit NZ.

- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz