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what's happening to OUR water?

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #300 on: March 15, 2016, 11:45:30 pm »


CLEAN AND GREEN
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« Reply #301 on: March 15, 2016, 11:46:34 pm »


DAIRYING AND IRRIGATION
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« Reply #302 on: March 31, 2016, 01:22:01 pm »

Grandfather says Clean up Water
Dunedin
By Damian George on Thu, 31 Mar 2016

 A Port Chalmers resident says rivers he swam in as a child are too polluted for his grandchildren to swim in and has called on the Government to put aside cost concerns and clean up New Zealand's waters.

David Blair (69) was one of about 20 people at a public meeting in Dunedin yesterday addressing freshwater reform proposals.

The meeting, at the Kokiri Centre, involved a presentation on the proposals by Ministry for the Environment representatives and offered an opportunity for members of the public to provide feedback.

Mr Blair, an environmental contractor and long-time outdoors enthusiast, said he used to swim in, fish and drink from many low-lying rivers in South Otago.

He now knew of no low-lying rivers in the South Island where that was possible, he said.

‘‘Can't we have our goals a bit higher instead of making it about money or costs?'' he asked.

‘‘We need to think more about the economy of the environment, rather than the economy of produce.''

Mr Blair brought to the meeting pictures he took earlier this year of the Hakataramea River, near Kurow, which he said showed the river was too polluted to swim in.

The river contained cyanobacteria, which could be fatal for dogs, plus a build-up of other algae, he said.

‘‘This used to be an urban problem; now it's a rural problem.

‘‘The intensified farming in the last 15 years has really destroyed our rivers.''

Ministry for Primary Industries director of resource policy David Wansbrough told Mr Blair achieving a balance between industry and the environment was a constant battle.

‘‘The country wants water again. We want to drink it.

‘‘We're trying to find that balance.''

The ministry was proposing to allow regions to decide how they maintained the quality of New Zealand's better waters, Mr Wansbrough said.

The Government proposals included maintaining or improving fresh water quality; requiring farmers to ensure stock could not enter streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands; and introducing a consistent method of measuring ecological health or rivers.

The latter would be achieved by making the macroinvertebrate community index (MCI) a mandatory method of monitoring rivers' ecological health.

MCI recorded the number of aquatic insects living in a freshwater ecosystem, with higher numbers indicating a better river condition.

The proposals also included ways to improve the economic use of freshwater.

Those included developing a technical efficiency standard to address overallocation of water and free up water for new users, and requiring councils to apply good management practice in catchments where discharge allowances had been allocated.

The meeting also proposed ways to recognise iwi rights and interests in freshwater policies.

One of those was recognising the Te Mana o te Wai fund as the underpinning platform for community discussions on freshwater values, objectives and limits.

Te Mana o te Wai provided funding for projects supporting iwi and hapu to improve freshwater quality.

Iwi would also be included in decision-making about freshwater in their territories and all marae and papakainga would have access to clean drinking water.

The latter had been a problem in certain areas in New Zealand, notably Gisborne and Auckland.

Ministry director for iwi rights and interests Tania Gerrard said iwi did not believe the proposals had gone far enough in addressing their concerns.

Ministry director of water policy Peter Brunt moved to allay the concerns of one speaker, who was worried by the Government's recently stated stance of having a ‘‘wadeable'' water standard as the nation's bottom line.

Mr Brunt said comments, by Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith had been taken out of context.

‘‘Wadeable was the bottom line for the worst waters.''

damian.george@odt.co.nz



Read the rest and see the slideshow at

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/378019/grandfather-says-clean-freshwater

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« Reply #303 on: July 11, 2016, 09:42:05 am »

BUNG THE BORE 4evr!

The water rights were part of the sale of Lot 9 in the Ashburton business estate, which comes with a resource consent to extract up to 45 litres of water per second from the town's aquifer, through to 2046.

Local residents opposed to the plan formed the Bung the Bore Action Group to try to stop the sale going ahead.

Asburton mayor Angus McKay said the decision to call off the sale was made by councillors late last week after the purchaser failed to meet council deadlines for information about how they intended to run a water bottling plant from the site.

Mr McKay said the council had twice in the past year agreed to extend the due diligence timeframe for the potential purchaser.

A further extension was requested until 30 September but before it was granted the council wanted to know more about the specifics of the operation.

Mr McKay said the purchaser had not provided the information, which gave enough cause for concern to cancel the agreement.

Resident Jen Branje, leader of the Bung the Bore Group, said the land could still be sold to another buyer so it was important the attached resource consent to take water was abandoned.

The cancellation of the deal gave opponents time to examine the consent further, she told Morning Report.

"That was always our main concern ... the take of water and the consent to take that water."

"They could still sell Lot 9 to another buyer and still have that consent attached."

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/308390/water-rights-sale-falls-over
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« Reply #304 on: August 10, 2016, 10:38:51 pm »


from The Washington Post....

We’re trashing the oceans — and they’re
returning the favor by making us sick


By CHRIS MOONEY | 3:21PM EDT - Monday, August 08, 2016

The Atlantic Ocean washes up at Arpoador rock last year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. — Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images.
The Atlantic Ocean washes up at Arpoador rock last year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. — Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images.

SIX YEARS AGO, in a bracing TED talk, coral reef scientist Jeremy Jackson laid out “how we wrecked the ocean.” In the talk, he detailed not only how overfishing, global warming, and various forms of pollution are damaging ocean ecosystems — but also, strikingly, how these human-driven injuries to the oceans can be harmful to those who live on land.

Toxic algal blooms, for instance, can actually damage air quality near the coast. “The coast, instead of being paradise, is harmful to your health,” he said.

We saw a striking example of this earlier this summer off the coast of Florida, when a toxic bloom that began in Lake Okeechobee — fanned by high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous pollution — spread to Florida's coast after flows from the swollen lake were released to keep water levels down.

Now, unfortunately, new research suggests yet another example. In a new study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers find that Vibrio bacteria, tiny marine organisms capable of causing deadly infections in both human and also fish, are becoming more prevalent in North Atlantic coastal regions as ocean waters warm. (We're causing that overall trend of warming, of course, by driving climate change, though there are also natural oscillations at work here.)

Indeed, human infections caused by these critters are also on the rise. The research finds these are growing at an “unprecedented rate” along the U.S. Atlantic coast and also the coasts of Northern Europe.

“We were able to demonstrate that there was an increase in the numbers of vibrios, probably a two or threefold increase, correlated with the increase in climate temperature, and then correlated with outbreaks of vibrio infections that have been recorded in the medical records,” said Rita Colwell, a microbiologist at the University of Maryland who is a co-author of the study, and who was also formerly administrator of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Colwell published the study along with researchers from the University of Genoa in Italy, the University of Plymouth in the UK, and other U.S. and global institutions.

Vibrio are very simple organisms, but nonetheless capable of causing severe damage. Vibrio also come in many species — some are responsible for causing cholera. Another species, Vibrio vulnificus, was described as “highly lethal and… responsible for the overwhelming majority of reported seafood-related deaths in the United States” in a recent scientific paper.

This species of vibrio can not only poison us through food, but can cause deadly infections to people who swim with cuts or wounds, into which the bacteria can enter.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 80,000 cases of vibriosis in the U.S. annually, the vast majority from consuming seafood. Vibrio also thrive in warmer sea waters, suggesting the risk is greater in the summer — which, of course, is when people are in the water or near beaches, consuming seafood.

The new study examined 133 samples of long-term marine plankton levels from across the North Atlantic region, and then analyzed the vibrio content within them, in proportion to other bacteria levels. The samples dated back about a half century.

In eight out of nine regions of the North Atlantic, the study found that as temperatures warmed, numbers of vibrio bacteria also grew. Furthermore, it also showed a relationship between growing vibrio numbers and growing vibrio cases in humans, a relationship that was particularly pronounced during heat waves. “An increased Vibrio concentration in seawater as a result of ocean warming can be concluded to be linked with increased incidence of environmentally acquired infections,” the study concludes.

When asked if growing numbers of vibrio are just one kind of deleterious changes to the ocean brought on by climate change — changes that, in turn, can harm us — Colwell responded, “The answer to that would be yes. It's a disruption of the natural pattern, and it will be selecting for a number of species, and that's the problem.”

“What this new research does is present evidence of the increased prevalence of these bacteria over broad regions of the North Atlantic from preserved samples collected over 54 years,” said marine ecologist Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who was not involved in the research. “The prevalence of these bacteria has increased as the ocean has warmed, both as result of global warming and multi-decadal variations in ocean circulation. This trend may be caused by changes in the plankton community rather than just the temperature alone. In other words, increased prevalence may be an ecosystem-level effect of climate change.”

“The relationship of these trends with the incidence of the human diseases reported caused by Vibrio species as reported in the paper is less-convincing, particularly because the long-term plankton monitoring was not conducted off the US coast,” adds Boesch. “Nonetheless, there is ample other information on this relationship to counsel increased vigilance in protecting public health from these natural environmental pathogens in our warming world.”

So in sum, it's more evidence supporting Jackson’s point — we don't just damage the oceans with impunity. Rather, from harm to fisheries to direct human health threats, that damage hurts us, too.

“I think the public would not expect that the oceans would have that direct impact on human health,” said Colwell.


• Chris Mooney reports on science and the environment for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/08/08/were-trashing-the-oceans-and-making-ourselves-sick-in-the-process
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« Reply #305 on: August 11, 2016, 03:51:50 am »


Mystery as Rio Olympic diving pool turns murky green

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/olympics/83010178/Mystery-as-Rio-Olympic-diving-pool-turns-murky-green

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile
The water in the Rio Olympics diving pool turned from a crystal blue to a murky green Tuesday due to a “proliferation of algae,” an official said.

The water at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Center, which puzzled many competitors and Olympic viewers after it mysteriously transformed colors Tuesday, is not dangerous to the athletes, Olympic organizers said in a statement.

The difference between the diving pool and the adjacent pool was highlighted in this tweet from the British diver Tom Daley.


http://time.com/4446210/water-rio-olympics-pool-green-blue-algae/


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« Reply #306 on: September 13, 2016, 05:22:25 pm »



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« Reply #307 on: September 13, 2016, 05:34:14 pm »





from Greenpeace....

BREAKING: Greenpeace uplifts Ruataniwha dam site office — returns to sender



from Hawke's Bay Today....

Dam site office ‘uplifted’ and driven to regional council



from Fairfax NZ....

Hawke's Bay Regional Council shed ‘returned to sender’ by Greenpeace





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