Benefits of compliance Overstated
While I agreed in my previous article that the costs of compliance with the new water quality rules seemed to be very understated and that could have been seen as a negative reaction from the agricultural sector, I believe that the Benefits claimed by MfE should also be subjected to scrutiny.
I am at a loss as to how the Ministry for Environment (MfE) could come up with an annual benefit figure of $ 2.4billion per annum.
This is an absolute impossibility if the benefit is seen as reduced cost of water treatment.
The capital cost of Water treatment to comply with the health standards will not reduce at all because treatment has to be designed for worst case events.
If average water quality improves, then it could mean a reduction in back-flushing of screens and perhaps a 10% reduction in chlorine, but that is about it.
Most municipal water in New Zealand is harvested from protected catchments into storage reservoirs where there is no agriculture in the catchments, or from Water Bores.
Hamilton to Huntly is the exception with this area having a total reliance on the Waikato River.
Auckland gets less than 25% of its water from the Waikato and to make a significant improvement in the water quality at Tuakau is not going to change the treatment requirements.
A Natural Resources Engineer has looked at the water sources for all the NZ urban centres with populations greater than 15,000 people and believes that annual savings in excess of just $10m would be hard to find.
MfE states that there will be benefits from water clarity and reduced sediment of $123m and between $1.8m-$5.4m from less erosion. The true fact of this is that without an achievable eradication plan for Koi Carp then this reduction in sediment and erosion effects will never be realised and in fact the levels of both sedimentation and erosion of the waterways and watercourses will only get worse.
This failure to control or eradicate Koi Carp will also lead to a reduction in the levels of indigenous flora and fauna and over time will more than likely lead to mass extinction of native species of both flora and fauna in, and on the margins of, the waterways.
The eventual outcome will be that the deleterious effects from Koi Carp will far outweigh any benefits that may be gained from the farming sectors under these new rules.
Andy Loader
Co-Chairman P.L.U.G.