Water Quality
To help inform our understanding of priorities for freshwater management in the catchment, an assessment of water quality monitoring in the catchment has been undertaken.
This work:
- outlines details of current and historic water quality monitoring carried out by the Otago Regional Council and other organisations to date,
- summarises what is known about water quality state and trends from monitoring and investigations, drawing on existing readily available reports and previously unreported water quality investigation data collected between 2019 and 2024, and
- identifies water quality issues and associated information gaps and monitoring priorities.
This assessment provides valuable insights to help understand our river – its vulnerabilities and special characteristics. It also provides insights for farm management/planning.
This work was commissioned by the Healthy Taieri project and Tiaki Maniototo (in the Upper Taiari area), with the support of funding from Access to Experts.
Water Quality Reports
You can access the full reports for each section of the Taiari here:
Upper Taiari
Mid Taiari
Lower Taiari
The following short reports summarise key findings from the full reports, and recommend actions for landowners, to help further improve river health in the Taieri catchment.
Upper Taiari
Mid Taiari
Lower Taiari
Overview of water quality in the Taiari catchment
This map indicates how water quality in the Taiari catchment compares with other monitored rivers in rural areas of New Zealand.
This information can be used to understand potential priorities for land management actions or mitigations to support or enhance water quality or river health.
Water quality information in these maps is based on monthly State of the Environment monitoring carried out by the Otago Regional Council (median values are presented for the five years ending June 2022), compared with median values for rivers in other rural areas sourced from LAWA. For further detail about river health in the Taiari catchment please refer to the reports on this page (above).
View the map below or launch in a new window.