The Piha Ratepayers & Residents are not sharing

Quote “Piha R&R has been sampling the Piha Lagoon for analysis by the Auckland Council’s Laboratory (Aqualab), at it’s own expense, for several months and before Council recommenced testing in the first week of November.”

If you, at your own expense, are having Piha Lagoon tested for pollution why are you not sharing the results with the good people of Piha?

Quote “The Piha lagoon has finally washed out naturally in that heavy rain we had over last weekend!  First time for about 3- 4 years.  It will be intereting (sic) to note how long it takes to dam up again.”

What a load of nonsense!  The Lagoon has been ‘open’ many times in the last few years.  Why are you saying this?

Please don’t make me find a photo showing this because you know I will !

A comment from Auckland Council yesterday

Under the Environmental Health Act,  Licencing and Compliance, who run the Safeswim programme, have made the decision that the amount of closures mean that the site at the Piha Lagoon, North piha and Bethells (Te henga) are to have Long term warning signage installed. This is based on the last 5 years of data.  This means that under that programme the sites are no longer tested and therefore no actual results are available for the safeswim site.   

As the West Coast Lagoons Working Party,  we have been working really hard to create some change in the water quality through the range of incentives to owners of on-site wastewater treatment systems, so  we are continuing to test at these sites so we can monitor any improvements from these.  These are the results that Love our Lagoons are reporting – which should have the actual values on the graph.   We can’t put them on safe swim site  as that creates mixed messages on our advice to users which is that it is advised not to swim in the lagoons.

What we are working with Licencing and Compliance to ensure there are effective criteria to remove the warning signage as we see continuous levels of improved water quality.