Water Programme of Action: The Effects of Rural Land Use on Water Quality
The problem addressed by the Water Quality paper is a lack of effective management of diffuse discharges of contaminants to land in some catchments, which contributes to poor water quality, especially in lowland rivers and lakes.
Diffuse discharges are particularly a feature of the rural environment, as discharges in the urban area are more commonly concentrated at a specific point and controlled by resource consents. In addition, only 3% of the length of New Zealand's rivers flows through urban areas. For these reasons, the project focuses on the impacts of rural land use, while noting that some issues for urban land use are likely to be similar and may be considered in future processes.
Requirements for a good water quality management framework and potential actions that could be taken to improve the current framework are identified.
This paper was published as part of the Water Programme of Action Freshwater for a Sustainable Future consultation.
- 1 Purpose
- 2 Problem Definition: Effects of Rural Land Use on Water Quality
- 3 Essential Features of a Framework for Managing Water Quality
- 4 Current Framework
- 5 Gap Analysis
- 6 Ways Forward
- 7 The Overall Way Forward
- Appendix 1: Process to date: Water Programme of Action Water Quality Working Group
- Appendix 2: Water quality in New Zealand: The current situation
- Appendix 3: Case study on Lake Taupo
- Appendix 4: Case study on Lake Alexandrina
- Glossary
- Download as a PDF File [
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The interdepartmental working group involved in this project comprises of the following government departments:
- Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
- Ministry for the Environment
- Ministry of Economic Development
- Ministry of Health
- Department of Conservation
- Te Puni Kokiri
- The Treasury
- Department of Internal Affairs
- Environment Waikato and Marlborough District Council as representative of
regional councils.
Contact for Enquiries
Water Programme of Action
Ministry for the Environment
PO Box 10-362
Wellington
or
Water Programme of Action
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington
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