Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

On Friday I interviewed a representative of oyster farmers in the Mahurangi area who were outraged at a wastewater dump by Watercare that had poisoned their oysters.  They have to close for 28 days. One farmer has to dump 80,000 oysters. That’s not good for business or their cashflow.  As the interview went on I found out that this is not an isolated incident.  It’s already happened 39 times before this year.  And even worse Watercare has the right to do a dump like this 200 times every year.  I was flabbergasted. That seems like an awful lot of dumping. Then in the weekend I got a call from a local MP.  She told me Watercare basically wrote their own consent.   They needed to involve public consultation yet all they did was drop some leaflets at the Warkworth library.  She's raised the issue with the mayor, the man who wants to make Auckland a global city, and Mr Fix it doesn't seem at all interested in fixing it. And now they dump the regions wastewater into the Mahur