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Students from Warkworth Primary School added their voices to protests over the discharge of sewage into the Mahurangi River at Rodney Local Board last Wednesday, July 16.
After performing a karakia to open the meeting, 13 Year 5 students gave a deputation on the importance of protecting the river from polluted wastewater and said Auckland Council and Watercare should do more to solve the problem.
“Last term we were learning about wai ora (healthy water) and the ecosystems that rely on healthy water to survive,” Quinn Dormer said. “Can you imagine our horror when we discovered that raw sewage was flowing out from the Mahurangi River to the beaches where rocky shore creatures live?”
Maddison Vujcich said it was a big problem, as sewage overflow was hurting the environment and making kai moana unsafe.
“Also, the oyster farmers won’t be able to make money, because their oysters are getting polluted and can’t be sold,” she said.
The students said council and Watercare should compensate oyster farmers and not allow any more houses to be built until the wastewater system had been upgraded, and suggested putting composting toilets into new houses.
“You can do a lot with poo! You can compost it and turn it into soil to grow trees and plants,” said Matthew Meets, before showing members an idea for a wind-powered water mill that scooped up sewage and turned it into compost.
“Come up with better sewage solutions like us,” Cohen Higgins said. “If we can solve this problem and we’re only 10, then you can too. Stop sewage overflow now!”
Members were impressed and told the students that they regularly pointed out the lack of wastewater capacity to council, but they were often ignored as well.
“We do agree with you guys,” Mark Dennis said. “Council’s quite complicated and there are a lot of people with ways to get around things, and developers build a lot of stuff that we disagree with, so we are on your side.”
