ruataniwha dam proposal

from that article a quote from Gary Taylor, head of the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) and instigator of the Government’s Land and Water Forum, "Put simply, the level of nitrates in the Tukituki is already well above 0.8mg/l in many places, and the roll-out of a massive irrigation scheme is likely to lead to a shift away from lower-leaching land uses such as sheep farming to intensive higher-leaching farm types. “So we can’t see how it can work,” says Taylor. In particular, he is alarmed that HBRIC has interpreted the rules to mean that the irrigation scheme is under no obligation to meet the new 0.8mg/l standard. Instead, Pearce argues that’s a problem for the council – the scheme’s foundation shareholder – to solve." Of course the council doesnt have to fix this as creating the dam will not increase nitrate levels. That happens further down the line and is someone elses problem. The way I see this is that the bulk of the money is coming indirectly from the dairy industry but we have already past the boom times in dairy and as more farms start producing milk the price of milk will just go lower. Fast forward 10 years after this dam is built and see lots of bankrupt farmers a dam no longer needed and the rivers that feed it still broken

Either the Listener's reporting and editorial staff aren't doing their jobs very well, or the whole argument about this dam is coming down to a collection of politicians and private beneficiary farmers saying that it's awesome according to their own interpretations of data. Meanwhile opponents produce accredited scientists, speaking their areas of expertise on the same data, who make scientific arguments about how it's likely to be an environmental disaster, and very possibly a major economic failure. I wonder which it is. It'd be helpful to see the scientific rebuttals of the scientific arguments against the scheme.

darfield is an area with a high cow population article here about what has happened there with drinking water in recent years. example of what can happen with increased farming intensification from increased irrigation http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/83457130/poisoning-the-wells-a-history-of-infected-drinking-water-in-canterbury

That's what passes for journalistic balance these days @izogi On one side you have scientific fact backed up with evidence, and on the other you have someone's opinion.

Only have to look at the rivers they are looking to dam to know how successful this project will be. A river in a gravel bed that runs brown year round is not healthy. Come summer you can cross them in jandals without getting your feet wet. This is before they take 3/4 of the water away

NZ nat geo article on water and irrigation in NZ https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/liquidation

Balance in parroting even amounts of stuff that interested people say is what you tend to get when news media no longer have the resources to employ people with the experience to research, understand and present real information all on their own. Stuff shifts from fairly representing the issue towards blindly giving the people an outlet to say whatever they want, and then blindly letting other people respond.