`Clean, green' waterways full of pollutants

You decide to take your toddler for a bush walk along a local stream. It's a great adventure that takes you through beautiful native bush, where you find interesting stones and leaves and watch your baby splash water from the stream.

Later, tired but happy, you go home. But the fun goes down the drain when your baby becomes irritable with a high fever and comes out in a rash, likely caused by the polluted water she must have swallowed ...

New Zealand is renowned for its "clean and green" image of sparkling waterways, expanses of native bush and our varied wildlife.

But do New Zealanders really know the state of our waterways today - the pollution, the lack of wildlife and the disrespect they receive on a daily basis? An Attitudes of Aucklanders survey suggests not: 58 per cent of respondents believed the health of our waterways is not a problem, or didn't care.

Yet other studies show high levels of pollution, endangering fish species and humans alike.

New Zealand has 10,000km of small waterways, mostly narrower than 2m, winding through rural, urban and industrial areas, behind factories, parks, under motorways and bridges before making it to the coast.

In Auckland, especially, most of these streams need urgent help from the effects of pollution, disrespect and neglect.

Human society is taking precedence over the health of our streams. They are being tunnelled under roads and flowed under bridges, altering their natural course and filling them with chemical pollutants from runoff and bacterial contamination from sewerage and waste-water overflows.

A research project on E coli in Auckland's Oakley Creek by a local secondary school student found that over half of samples taken along the stream were above the safe level for recreation (>260 colonies per 100ml of water).

Many of these were also in the red zone, requiring urgent action, with concentrations over 550 colonies per 100ml, an unsafe level for humans.

People fail to see the damage overflowing drains are doing to our streams - but if human health is at risk, surely we should take notice.

You may say that these streams are beautiful as they wind through local parks with lots of trees and sparkling water. But I urge you to take a kayak or similar and start from the mangroves at the river mouth and travel up the stream. A fun day out with your family is guaranteed as you, like WaiCare co-ordinator Andrew Jenks and volunteers did, will find rubbish enough to fill many 6m x 6m skips - among the scum and chip-wrappers are drink bottles and children's toys, car bodies, motorbikes, fridges, washing machines and even council rubbish bins waiting to be discovered.

New Zealanders take pride in our natural environment. Many of us love the outdoors, fishing in the streams, playing at the beach and climbing mountains.

But how can we continue to enjoy it if each day we are polluting the environment and ruining it for our children and grandchildren? The chemical and bacterial pollutants are killing off the fish and other marine life that live in the streams and provide the backbone to our ecosystems.

Only last year a cement spill killed over 500 eels in an Auckland stream, many of which were over 50 years old.

If New Zealanders really cared and weren't so ignorant then they would do something about it. There are many volunteer organisations striving for one thing - to clean up and save our waterways for future generations.

Talk to your local council or Department of Conservation to find a restoration group near you with volunteer days. Or take action yourself; take a walk along a local stream with a few plastic bags to pick up the rubbish you see. It's a tiny effort compared to the size of the problem, but one person doing their bit is a start.

As a country we need to learn to respect our waterways. We need to look around, think about what is happening and then take action. The pollution in our waterways is a serious problem that is damaging our environment, ecosystem and humans too. We need to take urgent action.

Anita Austin, Year 11, St Cuthbert's College