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“Stream Life Dies As Dye Clouds Water”

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Description: This image was taken for the June 18th 1978, edition of the Tribune weekly newspaper, and was published with the caption “Death in the river… Simon Henderson (10) (left), Anthony Stewart (12) and Jason Haakman (10) with some of the eels their effort failed to revive.”

An excerpt from the article read: “The Kawau Stream runs blue - and red - and white. Just recently it ran white, and eels died by the score. Other aquatic life died as well. It's not a rare occurrence, but something that happens every few months, according to the residents in the area. "Every time it happens all the eels, waterboatmen and other things in the stream die. After a few months they all start coming back again – and then more pollution comes down and they all die again." Anthony Stewart (12) said this as he watched the corpses of dead eels floating slowly downstream.”

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Sometimes the stream's purple, sometimes it’s blue," said Anthony's father, Mr Graham Stewart. "The thing the kids can't understand is they get ‘care for the environment’ hammered into them at school every day and then they come home and see what adults have done to this stream." Asked if they had taken samples of the stream, or reported the incident to the Manawatu Catchment Board, Mr Stewart said they'd be running up and down the bank every day if they started doing that. But he would tell the catchment board. What annoys him is that the pollution seems to occur in holiday weekends or at night, when nothing can be done about finding out who's causing it. He said the catchment board had threatened to prosecute people before, but the pollution hadn't stopped.”

This image forms part of the Manawatū Evening Standard Negative Collection. Unfortunately, only negatives between April and December 1978 are held.