The Manawatu has earned us the dubious honour of being the most polluted river in the Southern Hemisphere. Anybody who remembers the quality of our waterways from the 1950s through to the 80s or thereabouts, will remember long summers spent swimming unhampered by any need to check the water quality before taking a dip. Didn’t matter if you swallowed a mouthful or two, it was clean and healthy.

There once was never a need to check the cleanliness of our waterways before swimming

One warning I read recently stated it was not safe to swim following floods, that being due to the run off from surrounding farms … pesticides, fertilizers, animal faeces and urine, the unmentionable dirty word, ‘glyphosate’ and whatever other herbicide the farmer uses that is deemed perfectly harmless. Farmers have told me in effect that “I can rest easy because roundup’s very mild”. They’re generally not inclined to want…