Our children will never forgive us if we don’t look after this precious resource.
Managing our waterways has become a complex balancing act. We must balance our desire to use water resources with a responsibility to ensure they can sustain their ‘slippery’ inhabitants.
We’ve done this in the proposed One Plan by recognising that each waterway has a unique set of values, and by setting standards for water management that sustains these values. These standards cover water quality, water quantity and the physical activities we undertake in the beds of rivers and lakes. We’re not going to tolerate poor water quality any longer.
We’re targeting point source pollution and non point source pollution with new standards for discharges to water and septic tanks, and nutrient management on intensive farms. We have identified aquatic ecosystems that are of importance and have a new environmental code of practice for our river management activities for flood control. There is so much dealt with in this theme that it cannot be effectively summarized here.
Suffice to say that the Region’s water management regime has had a complete overhaul and a new integrated catchment management approach has been proposed.