2016 River Story Finalists

Each year the Morgan Foundation identifies stories for consideration from around New Zealand.

The selection is based on four criteria: the freshwater-related challenges being addressed; the achievements so far; the extent of collaboration within the project; and the role of science.

Summaries of the projects are then prepared and judged by a leading New Zealand journalist.

Three stories have been shortlisted for the 2016 River Story Award. The winning River Story will be announced at the New Zealand River Awards to be held in Wellington on 3 November. The River Awards recognise the most improved river in each region and the three most improved rivers nationally.

This year’s River Story finalists come from Southland, North Otago and Bay of Plenty.

The Waitao River - Bay of Plenty

A small group set out to restore the health of the Waitao River and have ended up restoring their community. The river flows into the Tauranga estuary – once an abundant larder for local Māori. Today the larder is almost empty. As far back as the 1970s, local Māori recognised there was a problem and in the decades since they have inspired people into taking action. Now the whole community are chipping in to fence, plant and protect the river and refill the food basket.

Lower Mararoa River - Southland

The project to restore the Lower Mararoa River near Te Anau in Southland began rumbling in the late 1990s, swung into real action in 2006 and was completed in 2011. It’s a story of collaboration and completion. Willows gorse and broom have been cleared from the main part of the river, restoring it to the braided river it once was, much to the satisfaction and relief of farmers, fishermen, boaties, roading authorities, businesses and the wider community. The restoration work was mostly funded by Environment Southland, Meridian and LTNZ/LINZ, but volunteers put a huge amount of time and energy into seeing the project through to completion.

 

The Kingan Family - North Otago

There’s a lot of work going on in the Kakanui catchment in North Otago to improve water quality. The story is about one farming family in the Waiareka Creek area of the catchment - the Kingans - who have acknowledged that they have a responsibility to future generations for the state of the land they farm and nearby waterways. They are the third generation to farm the land and want to make sure that the move to irrigation and more intensive dairy farming is done on a sustainable basis. The land and the local environment have to be managed so they can benefit many more generations.

 

Below are more detailed versions of each of the three stories and relevant contacts.

Contact:   Andrew Gawith, NZ River Awards, 027 4511 417

 

Southland, Lower Mararoa

Successful Collaboration

At the turn of the century people living around Te Anau decided they had to do something about the state of the lower Mararoa River. The problem was that willows and other pest plants were chocking this formerly beautiful braided river – water quality was deteriorating, swimming, fishing, picnicking and kayaking opportunities were disappearing, as were wildlife habitats.

It wasn’t just the locals who were concerned: farmers were worried about losing valuable land as the river kept spreading; NZ Transport Authority was concerned about the threat to roads and bridges alongside the river, particularly State Highway 94 (the main tourist route to Te Anau and Milford Sound); and Fish & Game could see a valuable fishing river being destroyed. Meridian Energy, the owner of the Manapouri power station, local councils and Iwi all had an interest in reversing the damage. To convert all these concerns into concerted action required collaboration between around a dozen stakeholders.

By 2005, five years after the first community meeting, the initial action group had pulled together most of the interested parties. The NZ Landcare Trust helped coordinate things to that point but to get the necessary funding and to actually undertake the restoration work required Environment Southland to put its hand up. Phil Smith (originally from Landcare Trust), was appointed chairman of the Restoration Working Project and his challenge was to get all the stakeholders to work together to restore the river. It sounds easy but needed wisdom, energy and leadership.

Phil Smith, and Ken McGraw (Environment Southland), were crucial to the success of the $3 million project. The restoration work involved removing and disposing of crack willows, gorse and broom from the river bed to allow it to flow within its former natural boundaries, rather than creeping ever wider, swallowing up valuable farmland, and endangering roads and bridges.

It now looks like the braided river it originally was. That means recreational values have been restored and black-billed gulls and other endangered riverine birds are returning to the open spaces of the river bed to live and nest. In short, this is a successfully completed river restoration project that came in under budget and ahead of time. Fifteen years on from the community deciding they needed to act if they wanted their local river back, concerted collaboration has delivered the right outcome. It’s a good time for Ken McGraw to retire to Cromwell and for Phil Smith to look back with satisfaction on a fine team effort.

Mr Phil Smith, Chairman Lower Mararoa River Restoration Working Party, 032497844

Mr Ken McGraw, Catchment Works Supervisor (Retired), Lower Mararoa Restoration Project Manager, 034450516

Andrew Gawith, NZ River Awards, 027 4511 417

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Waiareka Creek, Kakanui Valley

Custodians of the Land

Callum Kingan and his wife Twyla recognise that they are custodians of their land for a relatively brief time -- a generation is only a heartbeat in the life of the land.

Callum’s grandfather bought the property in 1953 and he is now the third generation to farm the property. Callum and Twyla returned to the farm in 2005 and converted and expanded it from a dryland sheep and beef farm to a 340 hectare, 700 cow dairy operation, thanks to the arrival of irrigation in the Waiareka Valley. The farm shifted up several gears – from a one-family farm to one that now supports six families. Water has transformed the land and what can be produced.

It wasn’t long, though, before Callum and Twyla recognised that with more intensive farming came some broader responsibilities, including for the water quality in their local streams. Monitored water quality in the Waiareka Creek, which drains the catchment their farm lies in, was poor and total nitrogen was declining. In 2010 the Kingan’s asked the Otago Regional Council to test water quality near the middle of their farm and in a stream as it left their property – the results convinced the Kingans to take action.

The tests highlighted two important points: firstly, too much water was simply running off the land; and secondly, valuable nutrients were being washed down the drain. Callum worked out that if they invested in variable rate irrigation and GPS technology they could solve both problems and more importantly improve the quality of surface water leaving their property. The cost of the new technology at around $60,000 could be recovered in 3 to 5 years – it was a no brainer. Much bigger effluent reservoirs have also helped improve nutrient management.

For the past three years the Kingans have contracted somebody to monitor the quality of water entering and leaving their property. While it requires up to ten years worth of data to get a statistically reliable trend, the results, so far, are heading in the right direction.

This is just one farm in one tributary of the much larger Kakanui catchment. Water quality in the catchment is a concern, especially with the expansion of dairying. In 2013 Landcare Trust with funding from the Ministry for the Environment worked with the landowners and the wider community to set up the Kakanui Community Catchment Project (KCCP). This is a three-year project to raise awareness of water quality and provide ways to improve it, reduce soil erosion and increase biodiversity (especially aquatic life) in the catchment. Other organisations are contributing to the project including Beef and Lamb NZ, Ravensdown and the North Otago Irrigation Company.

Callum is an active member of the (KCCP) and the North Otago Sustainable Land Management group (NOSLaM), both of which are involved in catchment-wide projects to restore water quality and river health.

Milk prices, although now recovering, have fallen steeply, and are unlikely to reach their previous highs anytime soon. This is a challenge for farmers like Callum and Twyla but if anything it has served to emphasise what’s really important to them in the long run: their family and what state they leave their land and environment in when their brief time as custodians comes to an end.

Callum and Twyla Kingan 03 432 6065

Andrew Gawith, NZ River Awards 027 4511 417

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Bay of Plenty, Waitoa River

Cultural collaboration

Māori and Pakeha of all ages are banding together to restore the Waitao river, which runs into Tauranga Harbour.

It was local hapu Ngati Pukenga who took the lead. They’d heard elders talking of times when the river and estuary were a larder, full of whitebait and eels, and flounder and mullet. Coastal vessels were able to navigate several kilometres up the river. Kiwi and kokako lived in the bush at the head of the catchment.

But changes in land use meant the estuary had filled with sediment. The river had clogged up and was no longer safe to swim in, let alone eat fish from.

In 2003 the hapu started working with NIWA and the NZ Landcare Trust to design and implement the Te Awa o Waitao restoration project. They began by clearing weeds and rubbish from wetlands close to the marae on the estuary, and secured funding to fence and plant the land.

They appointed a kaitiaki, Tom Cooper, to help collect monthly water samples. Twelve sites have been monitored since then for temperature, clarity, pH and conductivity.

In 2007-8 the hapu used early results in workshops to educate their neighbours upstream that they had a role to play too. You could see six metres through the water that flowed from the bush at the top of the catchment, but by the time it reached the Welcome Bay bridge near the estuary, you couldn’t even see your feet.

Those upstream neighbours had already been working together to stop a proposed dump, and in 2008 decided to join the fight to restore the Waitao to somewhere for birds to live and kids to play.

Volunteers from the Waitao-Kaiate Environment Group, made up of about 15 families, now run three small nurseries. They source local seed and raise several thousand plants a year, which they then plant out along the riverbank. They have working bees once a fortnight.

Now the hapu and the environment group are planning further collaboration. All stock has recently been moved from a wetland between the two marae on the estuary, and the hapu have begun planting four thousand trees provided by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council. Environment group members are pitching in to help.

They’ve already seen some improvement in water quality. The long-term monitoring shows clarity has improved and unhelpful nutrient levels have reduced. NIWA monitoring has found 15 species of fish and invertebrates. However there is still much to do. The region’s favourite swimming hole, the Kaiate, which falls near the top of the catchment, is closed to swimmers because of e. coli contamination.

Regional council staff are monitoring the water there more closely and working to ensure farmers upstream keep their stock out of the bush and away from waterways.

Everyone involved in the restoration realises that with changes in land use, much that was good has been lost over the years. The challenge is to bring it back, and that can only happen when everyone along a river works together.

Penny Deans 021 349 539