Depending on who you ask, Canterbury is either in the grip of a nitrate emergency orcontrolled by environmental alarmists waging a war on dairy cows. Despite the disagreement, there is no dispute the region's dairy boom has coincided with a decline in water quality. In the first of RNZ's three-part series Water Fight, Tim Brown reports on the health concerns raised by worsening drinking water contamination.
Luis Arevalo is about to welcome a grandson into the world but he does not think the child will ever drink from his kitchen tap because of nitrate-tainted water.
His family only drinks bottled water because he is worried about nitrate exposure from the Oxford Rural 1 supply where he lives in Canterbury's Waimakariri district.
Council testing shows nitrate-nitrogen levels between 4.3 to 5.17 milligrams per litre (mg/L) over the past two years, well below the drinking water standard of 11.3 mg/L, but Arevalo is concerned about emerging evidence detailing the potential health risks of nitrate at far lower levels.
"I'm old enough to remember when smoking was okay. I'm old enough to remember when seatbelts weren't needed in cars. When scientists and politicians and organisations and corporations were saying there's nothing to worry about, well, they've been proven wrong," he said.
"If enough scientists are saying we've got a problem here, I dare say we have got a problem."
Photo: RNZ / Stan McFerrier
Arevalo's concern was now even more personal, with the baby on the way.
"Our grandson will probably never drink the water out of the tap," he said.
"We know that what's being dumped in now won't come through for another 20 or 30 years, so we are going to have an incre
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