Friday, March 29, 2024

Award marks water improvement

Avatar photo
Heartening early progress in the remediation of an intensive dairying catchment in the Kokopu district near Whangarei has been recognised with a New Zealand Rivers Award.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Mangere Stream was recently named as Northland’s most improved and the fourth equal most improved river nationally.

The top three places in the 2014 awards went to rivers where urban wastes had been improved.

For the past decade the phosphorus levels measured in the Mangere Stream have reduced by 14.5% a year.

Sources of phosphorus from land use include dairy and human waste, the runoff of fertiliser applied by farmers, and soil erosion.

As part of the Northland Regional Council’s (NRC) response to the National Policy Statement on Freshwater, five priority catchments were identified and the first catchment group formed to improve the health of the Mangere.

Community stakeholders have begun a collaborative decision-making process for water quality objectives.

This includes the community describing how they value water quality in the Mangere Stream, including for stock drinking. From this, recommendations will be driven by the community for water quality limits to protect their values.

Although the Mangere, which flows into the Wairua River and Kaipara Harbour, was regularly placed at the bottom of Northland’s monitored rivers in the past, recent trend analysis by DairyNZ showed the catchment was improving.

“Sediment remains a key challenge to water quality now, both for the Mangere River’s native fish and insects, and downstream in the Kaipara Harbour,” Northland catchment engagement leader for DairyNZ, Helen Moodie, said.

Mangere contains 19 dairy farms and numerous lifestyle and horticultural properties and the stream is fed from springs in the native Pukenui Forest.

Local dairy farmer Shayne O’Shea was thrilled that farmer efforts over the past 10 years to improve water quality onfarm had been recognised by the NZ River Awards Trust.

Eighteen of the 19 farms have significantly upgraded their farm dairy effluent systems in the past seven years.

“I have fenced the stream to keep my cows out, increased effluent storage and installed a land application system to apply effluent to pasture.

“I have zero tolerance for pugging, even bringing the cows on the standoff pad in the middle of the night, if necessary.

“I have also changed to slow-release phosphate fertiliser which is less likely to end up in the waterways.”

Fellow Kokopu dairy farmer and co-chair of the catchment group, Royce Kokich, said he had come to appreciate how much others in the community cared for the health of the waterways.

“As a group we have spent a lot of time listening to other members, getting to know them and I’ve developed a whole new level of respect and understanding for the depth of care and concern people have for our river,” he said.

“We know that further riparian management will help to control stream bank erosion and provide more habitat for banded kokopu (whitebait) and other freshwater fish.

“The recognition of progress from the NZ River Award is a real

boost to dairy farmers in the catchment.”

NRC councillor Joe Carr, chairman of the environmental management committee, said Mangere Stream’s overall water quality had been affected by a variety of factors such as increased levels of bacteria, nutrients and sedimentation and there was still a great deal of work that could be done to further improve it.

High phosphorus levels could lead to the growth of algae and slimes, which in turn could smother the habitat of other freshwater life and cause other water quality issues.

“The reduction in phosphorus levels is largely due to measures put in place by farmers on surrounding dairy farms over the past decade or so, including substantial and costly upgrades to farm effluent systems and fencing and planting of riparian edges.”

He said the improvement also illustrated the benefits of the regional council’s persistence in promoting better standards of effluent treatment and management, not only in the Mangere catchment, but region-wide.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading