River pollution blamed on lack of 'family farms'

The demise of family farms and their replacement by purely profit-driven corporates is being blamed in large part for worsening river pollution problems, including Wairarapa and Tararua.
Wairarapa Green Party candidate Michael Woodcock, who owns a rural property in the Chester Road/Norfolk Road area, said it is obvious to everyone that rivers and waterways are becoming more and more polluted.
"I put a lot of it down to the fact that the old family farms that were passed from father to son are disappearing.
"There was always an expectation with family farming that each generation would improve things for the next, but corporate farming has changed that."
Mr Woodcock said a stream that eventually feeds into the Ruamahanga River flows through his land and arrives on his property heavily polluted from farm run-off.
"We had the water tested about two years ago and the e-coli count was way too high."
Mr Woodcock said people only had to look at the situation in the United States to discover what widespread corporate farming does to the environment.
"Family farming is virtually a thing of the past there and the emphasis is no longer in getting a good return from the land for the family, it's on getting as big a return as possible for investors."
As far as the Ruamahanga is concerned, Mr Woodcock said he had been using the river recreationally for 40 years and things have progressively worsened.
"It's not the river it was.
"In summer it is full of green slime and we have the local authority warning us of polluted sites and places not to swim."
"Fly fishing is out of the question as the line keeps getting slimed up."
He said New Zealanders must realise that achieving a clean environment comes at a cost. "It's not a free input."
This had been realised in some other countries like Denmark that had to grapple with having "a population of four million people and 20 million pigs".
Mr Woodcock said environmental problems like river pollution and dirty dairying should be "burning issues" for New Zealanders.
Tourists were being lured to this country in the belief it was green and clean whereas tourist hubs like Lake Taupo and Lake Rotorua were heavily polluted.
"It's shocking to think that in Wairarapa the effluent from all our towns goes into the river and eventually into Lake Wairarapa that is not allowed to operate as it naturally should be.
"Goodness knows what the true pollution levels are in the lake and yet people fish for whitebait there."
Mr Woodcock said regional and district councils throughout the area should be sitting around a collective table to figure out proper ways of dealing with pollution.
"They need to give urgency to this."
His comments come after remarks contained in a paper prepared by researcher Leila Chrystall.
Ms Chrystall wrote a university thesis on the Ruamahanga River and its catchment and found water quality was only "marginally better" than the Manawatu River, recognised as one of the most heavily polluted in the country.