What do you get when you combine a shallow water table with super-intensified dairy farming? Poisoned drinking water.
Southland farmers are poisoning themselves, their children, their neighbours, their communities. And the regulator doesn't want to know.
A report commissioned by Environment Southland shows "widespread degradation of Southland’s drinking water" with dangerous levels of nitrates through almost all of the area's waterways.
However ES didn't release the report which was hidden amongst other documents. After the ODT started asking questions, ES put out a media release saying "the problem could take decades to fix" but oddly, they didn't mention dairy farming once.
Funny that.
https://www.odt.co.nz/southland/nitrate-%E2%80%98news-not-good%E2%80%99-southland
