Govt bows to pressure, adopts 'swimmable' target for lakes and rivers

Thu, 23 Feb 2017

By Pattrick Smellie Feb. 23 (BusinessDesk) - The government has made an election year change to its goals for the quality of water in New Zealand's lakes and rivers, moving from a minimum standard of all water bodies being "wadeable" and adopting instead a target of 90 percent "swimmable" waterways by 2040. Achieving what Environment Minister Nick Smith said was an "ambitious" target would cost around $2 billion over the next 23 years and will cover the length of every river more than 400 centimetres deep and every lake with a perimeter o...

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