Muddying the waters: managing agricultural water quality in New Zealand

Abstract

Despite heightened public opinion over a number of years, considerable expenditure of money and concerted effort, freshwater pollution continues to be a public problem in New Zealand. For many years New Zealanders seem to have believed that they were immune from this, confident in their ‘clean green’ image, and that rain and snow melt flush unwanted substances and organisms out of lakes and rivers. New Zealand’s ‘clean green’ image continues to work well as a marketing slogan for New Zealand products internationally, but is often belied by conditions in the environment.