Gore District Mayor Ben Bell says while Greenpeace has valid concerns about the region’s drinking water, the environmental organisation’s efforts have been misdirected, untimely and potentially inaccurate.
Greenpeace Aotearoa said in a statement it had issued a public invitation to Mr Bell last week to help the organisation solve what it called a drinking-water crisis.
In the press release, Greenpeace spokesman Will Appelbe said the Gore tap water, which was undrinkable from July 18-21 due to its nitrate level, was the fault of "intensive dairy farming".
This follows the organisation’s protest and defacing of Gore’s signature brown trout statue and welcome sign on July 22, in which the trout was made to look dead.
"Welcome to Gore, where dirty dairy wrecked the water," the altered sign said.
On Friday, when asked about the public invitation, Mr Bell said Greenpeace’s offer was "a little bit" misdirected as he was not in charge of what the organisation wanted changed.
The press release called for the national limit of nitrate levels of 11.3mg per litre in drinking water to be lowered and said levels as low as 1mg per litre had been linked to increased risk of bowel cancer.
"If pregnant people drink water with nitrate levels of 5 mg per litre, there is increased risk of preterm birth," the press release said.
Mr Bell said the 11.3mg per litre national limit was set by government regulator Taumata Arowai and in line with international standards.
He said it was Environment Southland’s job to find out who or what was responsible for the nitrate increase, and it was yet to find the answer.
"We’re pushing Environment Southland to get us some answers around this investigation."
He said the defacing of the trout, right after the council had removed the do-not-consume notice on the water, was poor timing.
Also, Greenpeace used dip tests, which were not as accurate as the lab tests run by the council, the mayor said.
He said the council had invested in low-cost probes that detected any changes in nitrate in the water quickly.
To remove the nitrates from the water completely would require a multibillion-dollar reverse osmosis plant.
Once the pipeline under the river was connected to bores in Jacobs Town, with no nitrate issues, and Coopers Well, they will naturally dilute each other, he said.
"We’re quite close to a very low-cost solution," Mr Bell said.
"It won’t remove the nitrates, but it will keep them to the lower levels that Greenpeace are looking at."
