Eel man: I’m angry

Veteran eel fisherman Mike Holmes (above) stands to lose his livelihood if the degradation of New Zealand’s waterways continues.

But he says Kiwis stand to lose much more — the right to enjoy our cherished rivers and lakes.

For some waterways, including many around the Waikato region where Holmes is based, it’s already too late.

“The lower Waikato lakes, like Whangape and Waikare, we are not fishing there now because we’ve wrecked them,” he said.

“It just annoys me, it makes me angry.”

Holmes, who has watched the health of rivers decline over his three decades fishing in them, felt the only way to solve the problem was to halt inflows of nitrogen, phosphorus, effluent and sediments — or at least put firm limits on them.

The Government was doing some work, he said, “but they are not doing things that will make any difference in the positive”.

And he believed the issue of water pricing and ownership urgently needed addressing.

“The claim that no one owns the water is absurd: clearly, people who irrigate do, and people who sell bottled water do, so to say that people don’t flies in the faces of what we can see.”

Putting a price on water for commercial use had to come, Holmes said, and he didn’t see the challenge as too difficult.

Policy to stop any public funds being spent on clean-ups was something else he wanted parties to be advocating.

Rather, it should be water users and polluters fronting up for the cost.

“They are making a killing out of it and what does the public get?

“All the public gets is a bill to clean it up.

“So I’d like to see the situation fixed and it definitely needs to be a talking point at this election.”