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Pollution in our waterways
Waimate’s, in Canterbury, town water is loaded with nitrates from intensive dairy farming, and is unsafe to drink – locals are having to source their water from a tanker parked behind the local town hall. Watch Steve Abel (Senior Campaigner, Greenpeace) discuss this unfolding environmental disaster on TV1 Breakfast (Thursday 8 December 2022). Poisoned drinking water – coming to a town near you soon, courtesy of intensive dairy! (10 min.)
This 20 minute video, fronted by the charismatic Samah Seger, highlights the harm caused by the production of milk in Aotearoa New Zealand to freshwater, due to our industrial dairy farming model.
The basis of the TV1 story is a recent study by freshwater ecologist, Dr Mike Joy, which finds that it takes 11,000 litres of water to make 1 litre of milk (this figure includes the amount of water needed to dilute nitrates so that waterways don’t fall below national quality standards)
Nitrogen fertiliser is the root of the problem: Aoteroa New Zealand puts nitrogen fertiliser on the ground in astronomically high amounts, using more fertiliser per person than any place in the world.
The video concludes that intensive dairying is inherently unsustainable. However, responsibility rests not with farmers, but with central and local government’s drive to increase intensification. Here in CHB we have witnessed this, with our past-Regional Council’s attempt to build the Ruataniwha dam, and now a private-public partnership’s (Tukituki Water Security Project) attempt to resurrect Ruataniwha v.2.
The nitrogen lesson is apparently a hard one to learn.
Video published on You Tube by Aotearoa Liberation League. Downloaded 5 July 2022.
Whena Owen (Campbell Live) investigates how cadmium, a by-product of phosphate fertilisers, has for decades inadvertently been creeping into our soil and entering our food chain (especially vegetables, root crops such as potatoes, and grains like wheat used to make our bread). Cadmium is a heavy metal with research shows causes liver and kidney failure, bone softening, and cancer. Our overseas export meat markets have placed limits on the levels of cadmium they will accept in offal, with product that doesn’t make the grade being used in domestic pet food. Nick Kim (Environmental chemist) asks: “why won’t government legislate for maximum cadmium levels in fertiliser?”. Watch this video for the answer. (10:06)
A community in Canterbury struggles with drinking water contaminated with nitrate from synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and intensive dairying. Sign the petition to limit nitrate levels at https://greenpeace.nz/nitrate-limits-....
New Zealand’s clean, green image hides a dirty truth. Polluted by intensive dairy farming, its waterways are some of the most degraded in the world. Will the Ardern government clean it up?
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