Improving our water and land for generations to come

Following conversations with people from across Southland, the 18 values were confirmed and two new local values for freshwater have emerged.

“Through the Share Your Wai engagement campaign we learned that community wellbeing and connectedness and amenity and recreation near waterways are important to Southlanders.”

In 2019, Environment Southland staff and councillors set up shop at over 40 markets, A&P shows, events and supermarkets across the region to find out more about your aspirations for our waterways.

“Discovering these two new values was surprising and, with these new values in particular, demonstrates just how much our lives are connected to our lakes, estuaries, rivers and streams,” Chairman Horrell says.

These new values join our waterways with our spiritual wellbeing; that sense of place from being near a waterway.

Confirming these values is one of the first steps in the process outlined in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, which we are required to meet. The process ultimately leads to setting limits (for discharges into and abstractions from waterways), and outlining how we’re going to achieve those limits to improve our waterways.

“We must restore and protect what we have to ensure there is something we can be proud to leave to future generations of Southlanders,” he says.

Environment Southland has a responsibility to manage Southland’s natural resources in a sustainable way, and we take this seriously. We also have a responsibility to meet the requirements of national legislation as well as our own communities’ values and aspirations for water.

Environment Southland has a vision of maintaining a thriving Southland. “Our region has shown it can manage change and step up to challenges using innovation, and an understanding of our land and how to manage it.”

Go to the Water Story website for a full list of the what Southlanders value about our waterways and to read more about how we gathered these values: www.waterstory.es.govt.nz.

You can read the full Envirosouth magazine as a PDF online here.