State of the Environment Trends Report Completed

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council today adopted the five yearly state of the environment report: ‘Hawke’s Bay Trends: the state of our environment, summary report 2009-13’.

This report covers key information about the region’s natural resources and outlines where aspects are improving, staying the same or getting worse.

The report focuses on five key areas: climate and air quality, surface water and ecology, groundwater, land science and the coast.

“This summary clearly sets out all the information about Hawke’s Bay’s environment – both good and bad. This should help everyone to better understand what’s happening to our rivers, aquifers, land, coast and air and how the actions we take as a community can either improve a natural resource or continue to damage it,” says HBRC Chairman Fenton Wilson.

“Hawke’s Bay Trends is an important document as it is a comprehensive overview of the things that matter to the people of Hawke’s Bay from an environmental perspective,” says Iain Maxwell, Group Manager Resource Management.

“It presents information in largely non-scientific language so people can learn how good our air quality is, whether our rivers and lakes are getting cleaner or our aquifers are still good for drinking water, how land use is affecting soil quality, and what is living around our coast and how much they are affected by what happens on the land.”

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s science team has compiled the important data from years of monitoring and investigation programmes through all seasons.

“The team have worked hard turning the information they have gathered into an interesting and useful summary report, so they can communicate their knowledge to the community,” says science manager Dr Stephen Swabey.

The science team are also finalising the many detailed technical reports that underpin Hawke’s Bay Trends.

“People who need to dig deeper into aspects of our environmental data will be able to access these reports later this year,” says Dr Swabey.

Snapshots of information from the summary report:

• Air quality in winter in Napier and Hastings has improved over the period 2008-2013.

• 17% of sites across the region’s water ways have improving nitrogen levels, 10% are getting worse.

• 11% of the sites across the region’s water ways have improving phosphorus levels, this is less than the national average.

• Groundwater levels under the Heretaunga Plain near Fernhill have declined about 1.5 metres over the past 45 years; however near the coast, groundwater levels have remained about the same for the past 150 years.

• 70% of groundwater quality monitoring sites across the region have low (<1mg/l) levels of nitrate.

• No groundwater quality monitoring sites exceed the New Zealand Drinking Water Standard (NZDWS) for nitrate. Levels of bacteria in groundwater are improving, and all monitoring sites were compliant with the NZDWS in 2013.

• Some groundwater quality monitoring sites exceed the NZDWS for manganese (23%) and iron (28%) ; manganese and iron occur naturally in our aquifers.

• About 19% of the region’s land is potentially being used beyond its capability, and HBRC is working with landowners on conservation initiatives to change this.

• No soil monitoring sites exceeded the guideline for cadmium, some monitoring sites had high phosphorus and good levels of carbon.

• Sediment sampling in Ahuriri Estuary shows safe levels of contaminants at three of the four sites. The fourth site is impacted by storm water runoff from the nearby urban/industrial catchment.

The report is now being finalised for publication and will be widely available in libraries in late April 2015.

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