Why Auckland s beaches are unswimmable every time it rains, and what s being done to turn it around
9 Jan, 2021 06:02 AM
8 minutes to read
Home and hosed: Auckland water rules relaxed just in time for summer. Video / Will Trafford
Social issues reporter, NZ Heraldmichael.neilson@nzherald.co.nz
Ngarimu Blair has never swum in the waters of Ōkahu Bay, the ancestral waters of his hapū, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. It s not because he doesn t want to, but because of an intergenerational fear of getting violently ill.
Blair grew up with stories like that of his great grandfather who returned home from World War I to find his debt repaid with a pipe pumping raw sewage and hospital waste into their treasured place of recreation and kaimoana.