Megan Hands on nitrate emergency
Megan Hands wrote such a great post on Facebook about ECan declaring a nitrate emergency, I am republishing it here so it can be seen by a wider audience.
Today Environment Canterbury voted to declare a Nitrate Emergency.
I knew which way the vote was going to go.
I knew the arguments that would be traversed on both sides.
I know the politics.
I know the facts.
I can draw the nitrate risk maps from memory if you give me a whiteboard marker and a blank map- particularly in the Selwyn and Ashburton Zones.
I can quote pieces from the science reports prepared over the past 30 years.
I can recite the names of individuals who have sat around the tables trying to figure out the solutions. Many of whom are no longer with us.
The vote today wasn’t unexpected.
But what I wasn’t expecting, were the tears that came after the meeting as I drove away from the council building. Tears of sadness, but mostly of frustration. Frustration that we are back here.
Those who know me well, know that I don’t cry often, but when I do it’s usually out of passion but more often frustration.- When I was a teenager, I was more likely to have yelled, or slammed a door (sorry mum)- But I digress.
I was an environmental management and planning student at Lincoln University when the government removed ECan and put commissioners in place in 2010. I’d come to Lincoln after the Horizons One plan, and an environment court case opposing a water take that meant the bore on the farm I grew up on would no longer flow by way of artesian pressure sparking an interest in Resource Management.
I was 19, described myself as centrist and had not long signed up for the Young Nats, yes- I’ve always been a political nerd. But despite that, a rally against the government’s decision to remove democratically elected councillors was the first real political rally I had attended in my life. That decision just didn’t sit well with me at least at first.
I listened to the arguments from each ‘side’, and to my lecturers, to farmers, to politicians and continued with my education in planning. Everyone’s own version and perspectives on how we had got here. No properly functioning resource management regime, irrigation projects that promised significant economic development and climate resilience across canterbury, environmental challenges that needed addressing- including elevated nitrates.
Can’t we all just get around a table and figure this out? Surely we can find a balance? I mused – but in the back of my mind was the environment court process which had pitted neighbours against neighbours and ended decades long friendships back home.
The Land and Water forum was kicking off with sector leaders talking about working together. I went to a bluegreens forum. A man called Guy Salmon was there talking about collaborative planning and models from Scandinavia. I studied some more. Collaboration required everyone to come to the table prepared to compromise. It is a slow process, but one that sat well then, and still sits well with me today.
I was sold. For me it sounded like how relationships and communities should work. We all share this place, we all have a responsibility, and we all have dreams and aspirations for our own personal and collective successes. Sure, we will have some figurative (hopefully) scraps along the way, but we talk, and we work our way through that. That’s how we find solutions. That’s what leaders do.
Work on the Canterbury water management strategy had already begun in 2008. 10 Targets for Canterbury Water, some aspirations and some problems to solve.
10 Targets
- Environmental Limits
- Irrigated Land Area
- Ecosystem Health and Biodiversity
- Natural Character Braided Rivers
- Kaitiakitanga
- Drinking Water
- Recreation and Amenity
- Energy Security
- Regional and National Economic goals
- Water Use Efficiency
-Turns out I can still recite those too.
With commissioners in place, the Canterbury Water Management Strategy was progressed. 10 zone committees. Representatives from the community, lovers of weird and wonderful critters and beautiful landscapes of Canterbury- the place I was fast falling in love with and starting to think of already as my home. There were farmers, some district councillors, local Runanga representatives, fishermen, irrigation companies, industry reps. People wearing ties, people in gumboots, people in walking sandals.
People. People with an interest in the place that they lived.
Painstaking processes began. Science teams, planners, social scientists, facilitators. Hundreds – no, thousands of hours going through a process of setting the community values, understanding the science, the causes of water quality and quantity issues, potential solutions. Writing the Zone implementation plans, new rules, and zone addendums- essentially lists of policies and actions that each community painstakingly negotiated around those tables both statutory and non-statutory.
Some of those things were rules, some were big investments in projects like managed aquifer recharge and targeted stream augmentation, water storage and some smaller projects – like constructing wetlands, fencing off important springheads and planting more biodiversity.
While all this was happening, I finished my degree, moved to Otago and worked in resource management consultancy across Otago and Southland. I kept up with what was happening in Canterbury though, checking in with friends, media and the Ecan website.
In 2015 I came back- Straight back into it. This time as a staff member at Ecan, a land management advisor. The CWMS was still the core piece of work. Let’s help get these farmers their farm environment plans, but first we had to attempt to rebuild trust in an organisation that had been seen as a threat to their livelihood.
Just try to be a good human, help them where you can, and help translate planner to farmer and farmer to planner speak I told myself every day as I drove to work.
From there, I went back to industry, continuing that work, contributing to zone committee processes, helping facilitate the development of farm environmental plans and good management practices to reduce nitrogen losses and in turn improve water quality outcomes. Next, becoming a farm plan auditor.
I watched the progress being made with my own eyes and pushed harder to support and – ahem -encouragethose who needed it. I honed skills in influence, in conflict management, in business decision making processes. I learned more about people. What motivates them, how their relationship with the land defines who they are and how they see the world, just like it does me as the daughter of a farmer.
In my spare time, I put my hand up to join the Zone committee. A year or so later, I was the co-chair alongside Les Wanhalla, one of the local Runanga representatives from Taumutu. The first co-chairs of any of the zone committees. People asked how that could work.
Isn’t the point that we are all working together? I recall saying that to some naysayer.
What we knew, was that things were going to get worse water quality wise before it got better. Significant progress was starting to be made getting everyone on the metaphorical bus and landowners were making changes to farming and other land use practices. We talked at length about how we would tell that story, so that people didn’t lose heart and give up, or go septic on one another when progress was slow. But we never really figured out how to do that.
Today, I wish we’d tried harder with that- but would it have made a difference?
Fast forward to 2019
The local body elections are coming up. I’m still on the Zone Committee. I’m pregnant with my first child. The CWMS is still in it’s infancy in implementation. It’s going to take a long time to get us to where we are going.
Who is going to ensure the goals and plans set out by the community are continued with?
I sign the nomination form the day after I get home from the hospital with my newborn. A brochure about nitrates in drinking water in the bag I brought home from the hospital- it mentions potential risks, but doesn’t mention what is being done to address the issue.
I’m sure my now husband to be thinks I’m mental at this point.
Many industry colleagues ask me what the hell I’m doing. Why would I ruin my career by going into politics? I didn’t really have an answer, just a pull in my chest that this was something I had the knowledge and the nous to contribute to.
When I arrived at the table at Ecan I quickly realised that not everyone wanted to work together. I had been naïve about the influence of party politics in Christchurch’s local government sphere- especially given the national party didn’t run candidates in local elections but there is a very organised grouping on the other side of the spectrum. I hoped that didn’t matter too much. I was there to continue with the work of the CWMS the whole community had invested millions of dollars and thousands of man hours in.
During my time on council I tried to argue for working together where we could. I was a consistent supporter of non-statutory actions and went to great lengths to try to explain to my colleagues the work farmers – who are part of our community- were doing following the plans that had been set out.
I repeatedly heard from my elected colleagues that nobody was doing anything about the problems we had and wondered- often out very loud where the hell they had been for the past decade?
Late in my term, as we drifted further away from the CWMS being a core part of ECans work, the council voted to look to disestablish the Regional Committee and started asking questions if the zone committees still had a purpose. I despaired. There was still so much work to do and the council table was so divided. Working together seemed to be an exercise in futility. Myself and my farmer colleagues regularly compromised, but there was never any give from the other side of the debate. Perhaps this means we were playing the game wrong- but not a single one of us on that side of the table thought this was a game. This is people’s livelihoods and our natural environment.
I realised I was losing the best earning years of my life making little progress, and other opportunities cropped up. I now had two sons to provide for, and it didn’t make personal financial sense to keep making this sacrifice.
I decided I wouldn’t run again. In my final speech and leaving comments I called for the next council to;
“Recommit to a collaborative approach around the table with respect to freshwater planning. Get outside of the glass palace and out into the region where the real work is being done. Work together to meet our regions greatest challenge.”
Those words are still on my old, archived councillor facebook page. How ironic.
September 2025
I work for in farmer advocacy now, on local government issues across all of NZ. I try to carry the spirit of finding solutions into every advocacy conversation I have, but that doesn’t mean not calling things out strongly when required. This isn’t tiddlywinks, someone who will remain unnamed has told me, But I still pride myself on being constructive first and a fighter when it’s required.
I spoke to some farmers earlier in the week and told them about the notice of motion. A notice of motion that has been proposed by a former colleague I once comforted as she cried about the rough and tumble of politics as we both navigated our first term.
Q. What would them passing this actually achieve?
A. Political and media attention, and a couple of staff reports, and will be used as a stick to whack each other with around the table, just like the climate change emergency was.
Q. What has changed? Is there new information?
A. No, We’ve always known that in many areas the nitrates situation was going to get worse before it got better, even while massive improvements in farm practices are being made. “It’s in the post” Ken Taylors voice echoes in my head.
17/9/25 Back in the council building
I joke with some of my former colleagues from both sides of politics before the meeting, to some a friendly kia kaha, others a cheeky jibe about what kind of leader they are going to be today -there’s wee a barb in there but it’s a friendly one. That councillor I think knows me well enough to know that.
But others hardly acknowledge me. I am the enemy. My heart is not hardened enough for that not to burn just a little. I say hi to familiar faces on the ECan staff, and to some of the many new ones- there has been a lot of changes in the senior leadership team recently. Take from that what you like.
I sit in the council chamber. I flick off messages, update briefing papers.
Canterbury is my home. I have spent years of my life here looking for solutions, talking to farmers, to environmentalists, to people. We are all people I think to myself.
How does this help anyone?
I hoped for some movement from one or two councillors. I hoped that they would step up, they would show us that they are real leaders for Canterbury. One does. Deon Swiggs, who has my old seat at the table.
I hope he isn’t punished at the polls for being measured and moderate. A leader that knows that words mean something. That we are better off working things out together rather than apportioning blame and lying about what has happened already. The word emergency means something he says- I couldn’t agree more.
I knew the arguments that would be traversed on both sides.
I know the politics- there is an election on, and a protest outside the building. Greenpeace, aided by sitting councillors. The councillors repeat inflammatory claims, lies about the science, about bowel cancer, about lack of action. Some of the councillors voting for this have been at the table for 6 years, and in the controlling block of the council. They say the government has prevented action. But changes to planning laws only happened late last year, and writing rules isn’t the only tool at their disposal.
Before the debate started I wondered what the staff upstairs that have spent years of their lives working through carefully juggling the needs of the community, the need for the sustainable management of the environment juggling the social, economic, and cultural wellbeings are thinking and feeling.
My mind flashes to all the people who participated in the zone committee processes, the ones that are being implemented now. The farmers who are working their butts off every day trying to make improvements to their farming practices who have in some cases invested millions of dollars doing so.
Nitrates in water are a tricky issue and the ability to turn the situation and over what timeframe depends on the location, geomorphology and climatic conditions. In some areas there are quick wins, in others legacy issues that we either need to be patient to see change, or invest engineering and other non- statutory solutions.
During the debate Councillor Sunckell, a farmer who is also a paramedic talks about the 15 years of his life he’s spent on this, so does Nick Ward, an environmental award-winning farmer. It sits heavy.
Craig Pauling talks about working together but votes for the motion from the chair. Empty words that I wish he meant, because I know he can be the kind of leader that actually makes change. I’ve seen him on the end of a shovel and in a paddock with kids talking about biodiversity. Those words could equally have been uttered with a vote cast the opposite way. But he’ll be in parliament next year.
I understand.
The motion passes, 9-7 as expected. And just like that we are back to the beginning. Us and them.
A divided table.
Goodbye collaboration. It was nice knowing you.
And with that I go back to my original thoughts when I saw the notice of motion last week. This notice of motion does nothing to improve water quality. All it does is seek to divide the canterbury community once again. It isn’t helpful or constructive. Calling it an emergency raises a sense of fear. It’s irresponsible for leaders to be so alarmist. Particularly when it comes to something as fundamental to life and the economy as water.
Instinct tells you to snap back, to defend yourself when you’re being attacked. That’s human nature. But my overarching emotion is sadness.
Canterbury deserves better leadership than this. We deserve leaders that front up and are prepared to work together, that stick to their word, that recognise those who have been doing the work with actions not just words, even when the work is still ongoing. Not leaders who say they want to work together but then throw that in your face to score some political points.
Freshwater management in Canterbury is of national and regional environmental and economic significance. We deserve to have adults in the room when working on these challenges. Blaming each other is the easy way out. Talking to each other, finding solutions and honouring the agreements and compromises already made. Working collaboratively, we used to call it.
I knew which way the vote was going to go.
I knew the arguments that would be traversed on both sides.
I know the politics.
I know the facts.
The vote today wasn’t unexpected.
But tonight I have a lump in my throat. Because tomorrow we will still wake up with the same challenges with water quality, the same science telling us the same thing it has for the past few decades.
But we’ve also just seen the relationships and good will that so many of us have worked hard on as we tried to find and progressed solutions together in good faith trashed.
What a waste of human capital. What a dearth of true leadership for our community.
