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.