Like a doctor assessing the health of their patients, the Waterway and Estuary Science Team have collected a lot of information about what waterways need treating and why.
This information is shared with our policy and regulatory teams, but also with our catchment enhancement staff who do an amazing job turning around the degraded state of waterways, one stream reach and one wetland at a time.
Our Catchment Enhancement Programme (CEP) is here to meet the demand from our community and iwi for healthy rivers where we can swim or gather kai without getting sick and provide for healthy ecosystems.
Our CEP staff balance their time between investigations which try to determine the source of pollution or key habitat or other issues.
The remainder of their time is directed to achieving practical success on the ground and in the water with enhancement projects.
The CEP has had a number of positive outcomes in the last year, including collaboration with landowners who have provided significant in-kind contributions of funding, grazing land retirement and labour.
The programme also aims to fix a real problem within some Tasman rivers, lakes, wetlands, and estuaries that are degraded with either poor water quality or degraded habitat.
With good knowledge of the problem and good partnership with the community, including supervision of works and outcome monitoring, there is a high chance of achieving the objectives.
Take our work in the Motupipi River near Tākaka for example. While the water is still clear, this river and its tributaries used to have a much more diverse and abundant fish population but has become silted up with algal blooms and water weeds taking hold.