Water Babies
Einstein said, “Know where to find the information and how to use it – That’s the secret of success.” So maybe in crying “wolf!” the other day I was simply warming up my lungs. Today I’m a little more quiet (and for those of you who’ve never worked with me, my quietness ought to alert you to some fairly heavy duty thinking followed by some heavy duty questioning followed by some heavy duty action.)
“Know where to find the information …” I took a sharp left turn away from the epicentre of my look at drinking water standards because as one thought led to another my curiosity got the better of me and I ended up looking at Water Information New Zealand relating to Onga Onga. In particular to the Onga Onga Hall & Playcentre, and Onga Onga School. I had an inkling that was creating an intuitive knot in my gut. I didn’t like how it was feeling.
The Primary School has a note of TRANSGRESSIONS registered that is explained in the Compliance table as E. coli detected in more water samples than the minimum number allowable for a zone of this population. I felt sick just looking at them. They were in the RED too!
Now there’s a reasonable focus by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority with its emphasis on food and its explanation that E. coli are bacteria that normally live in the intestines of humans and animals. They say, most strains of this bacterium are harmless, several are known to produce toxins that can cause diarrhoea but one particular E. coli strain called O157:H7 can cause severe diarrhoea and kidney damage. Anyone of any age can become infected with E. coli O157:H7, but children and elderly persons are more likely to develop serious complications.
“The bacteria live in the intestines of some healthy cattle, sheep and pigs as well as deer and seagulls. Eating undercooked meat, usually minced meat, contaminated during the slaughter process has historically been blamed for most O157 infections. However, it is now well recognised that eating some raw vegetables, drinking untreated water and unpasteurised milk, and handling farm animals that are shedding the pathogen are perhaps more frequent sources of infection. Person-to-person transmission can occur if infected people do not wash their hands after using the toilet.”
Just so I didn’t seem like I was barking up the wrong tree, I took a quick look at the Tikokino Hall & Childcare, Tikokino School, Argyll East Hall & Playcentre (it at least complies for the 2007/8 period though it’s missing the compliance testing for E coli and Protozoa). These schools and Play Centres are ‘as the crow flies’ from Onga Onga.
Results were the same for Oueroa School (just up the road from when I grew up along Farm Road out of Waipukurau) where Corrective Actions were taken but delayed. They too got a notation of TRANSGRESSIONS. How could this be? If the focus for Economic Development in the region is: Owning Our Future ‘Building Prosperous Communities for our Grand Children” then perhaps we better have a closer look at how we’re travelling with taking care of Today’s kids because on paper we’re not looking too crash hot!
I’m hoping the webmaster for Water Information New Zealand has just been slack and hasn’t updated the site lately. I hope so. But all the gov-speak aside what’s the bottom line? I say, it’s the children. At the very least, School Authorities have a Duty of Care to the children to deliver clean water that will not harm them now or in the future. Seems like a reasonable deliverable to me.
And what about the Local Authority? I’ve just finished reading 181 pages of Drinking-water Standards for New Zealand 2005 and I have to say, I’m not feeling the Due Diligence in their stewardship. By my definition, a prosperous community for our grandchildren would, at the very least, include clean water to drink at intervals and lunch times.
Clean, safe water for the children. It should be a given, so Local Government policy and all that aside, who’s going to speak up for the children? I will. There’s too much RED that needs explaining for me to ignore. It’s not about blame, what did or didn’t get done. Who didn’t do what. Let’s fix it! Let’s build a prosperous community for our grandchildren, call them our water babies in this new decade. A decade in which we ought to start as we mean to go on.
