Land, Air, Water, Aotearoa (LAWA) released a national picture of river quality trends on Sunday. The National River Water Quality 10-year Trend Summary (2009-18) brings together results from more than 1400 river monitoring sites across New Zealand, including 97 Southland sites.
LAWA is a collaboration between Environment Southland and New Zealand's other 15 regional and unitary councils, the Cawthron Institute, and the Ministry for the Environment.
Environment Southland science manager Dr Elaine Moriarty said the release provided a great opportunity to review 10 years of hard work by the team in all kinds of weather to collect the data from rivers.
''I acknowledge the changes that many people are making on their land to ensure we get these improvements in water quality that we all want to see.
''I'm pleased to see that there are some improvements such as in E coli but also acknowledge that many of our popular swimming sites still have elevated levels of E coli.''
Southland results show that total nitrogen, total oxidised nitrogen and the Macroinvertebrate Invertebrate Community Index are degrading. However, improvements are seen in turbidity, clarity, ammoniacal nitrogen, total phosphorus, dissolved reactive phosphorus, and E coli.
Environment Southland acting chief executive Vin Smith said, ''Whether it be as an individual, business or farm, or within the urban or rural areas - every action is important. We all need to part our play.
''I encourage everyone to go to the LAWA website and explore water quality at your local river sites.''
