Part of the Manawatu River Catchment, the Mangatainoka is valued for its recreational opportunitites. Faced with potentially toxic algal blooms, the local farmers, industries and towns have come together to take action.
Part of the Manawatu Catchment, the Mangatainoka River is best known nationally as home to the Tui Brewery. Spanning 43 000 hectares the land surrounding the Mangatainoka is mainly used for sheep, beef and dairy farming. A number of small towns service the area, the largest of these Pahiatua.
Easily accessible, the Mangatainoka is renowned for its trout fishing and is popular with anglers of all abilities. As well as being a fishing hotspot it has a number of swimming spots popular with the locals.
According to LAWA, the Mangatainoka at SH2 monitoring site sits within the top 25% of all lowland rural sites for visual clarity, dissolved reactive phosphorus and total phosphorus. It is within the top 50% of lowland rural sites for E. coli and ammoniacal nitrogen but is within the worst 50% for both measures of nitrogen shown on the website.
However, over the 10 year period January 2004 – December 2013 there is an improving trend in dissolved reactive phosphorus, total oxidised nitrogen, ammoniacal nitrogen and clarity (black disc) and no degrading trends.
Although these trends show promise, high levels of nitrogen, combined with low levels of phosphorus, are still causing cyanobacteria to develop on parts of the river bed and the community is at work to improve the health of the Mangatainoka.
The Mangatainoka is captured under the Manawatu River Leaders’ Accord, a collaborative project to restore the health of the Manawatu’s waterways. You can learn more about the work underway at www.manawaturiver.co.nz