In February 2021, Dunedin City Council (DCC) advised citizens that water should not be consumed due to high levels of lead concentrations. This independent review into the health system response to this incident has found that the sector focused on reducing the risk to the community’s health first.

The report provides evidence that New Zealand’s freshwater is impacted by urban development, farming, forestry and other human activities. It highlights how climate change is set to make the issues faced by freshwater environments even worse.

This report shows how poor water quality stalls economic progress, stymies human potential, and reduces food production. The report calls for a paradigm shift that emphasizes safer, and often more cost-effective remedies that prevent pollution by combining smarter policies with newer technologies.

The need to understand the impact of urbanisation and changing land use on water and solute mass balances in the groundwater underlying urban areas has been increasingly recognised over the past 25 years. Groundwater resources are now included, for example, as part of integrated urban water management (IUWM). Conceptual models for IUWM have recently included:

The report is in two sections. The first is a summary report written from my Office with the assistance of the Departmental Science Advisors from the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for the Environment. This overview avoids technical detail but tries to explain the core issues of public concern that have implications for policy...