Nitrate poisoning of drinking water: coming to a town near you soon

Test Well 16501, Burnside Road, OngaOnga, Central Hawkes Bay

Radio NZ reports that Greenpeace has for the first time offered its free water testing programme in North Canterbury – the results show human health in the district is threatened by local farming practices:

• 73 percent of the new data points in Canterbury were above 1mg/L. (i.e. the level at which risks of bowel cancer appear)

• 39 percent were above 5mg/L. (i.e. the level at which risks of pre-term birth appear).

The reason for these elevated nitrate levels which threaten human health is spelt out by Greenpeace’s Amanda Larsson:

"Rural communities are most likely to be impacted by high levels of nitrate contamination in drinking water because they are the closest to intensive dairying - the main source of nitrate contamination."

This reflects a pattern across the Canterbury Region. Over in Mid-Canterbury back in August 2022 Waimate Council had to install water tanks to ensure safe drinking water was available for local residents, and warned that the usual method of boiling water doesn't remove nitrates.

Canterbury Regional Council science director Dr Tim Davie nevertheless puts local’s minds at rest in assuring them: “We have been working on this closely with the farming community for many years.”

Here in CHB we also have intensive and environmentally unsustainable dairy farming on the Ruataniwa Plains, with the same predictable result: the locally infamous Well 16501 in Burnside Road, Onga Onga, is running a 5 year median of 18 mg/L  nitrate nitrogen (yes, you read that right)

Nitrate poisoning of the water table – coming to a town near you soon, courtesy of intensive dairying.