A new national report on freshwater has prompted strong criticism from a Christchurch Central candidate, who said it confirmed long standing failures in water management.

Alliance Party candidate Greg Byrnes said the ‘Our Freshwater 2026’ report, released by the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand, showed the country’s water systems were on a damaging path.

Byrnes, a former Environment Canterbury councillor, said the findings reflected the combined impact of land use and climate change, driven by years of poor policy decisions.

He said the decline in freshwater quality was not unexpected, describing it as the result of treating water as a commodity rather than a protected resource.

“We have watched a decade of political manoeuvring, from the ‘swimmable rivers’ debacle where E. coli standards were simply loosened to make polluted water appear acceptable, to the current shifting between ‘Three Waters’ and ‘Local Water Done Well’,” Byrnes said.

“These failures, along with the recent repealing of the hierarchy of obligations in Te Mana o Te Wai, have consistently prioritised economic development and user needs over the fundamental health of the water itself.”

Byrnes also pointed to what he described as inconsistent leadership and the lack of durable cross party legislation over the past decade.

He said Canterbury reflected many of the national challenges, with about 70 percent of the country’s irrigated land and a previously declared nitrate emergency during the last council term.

Byrnes said urgent change was needed to prevent further degradation.

“Without a move away from the over commodification of water, the life sustaining resources of the planet will continue to be taken for granted until it is too late,” he said.

The Alliance Party said it was calling for long term cross party legislation on water management, along with a dedicated annual infrastructure budget.