Clean Water 2017: analysis of water quality monitoring sites making up the water quality categories expressed in lengths of rivers swimmable in Report ME 1293
Simon Johnson made this Official Information request to Ministry for the Environment
The request was successful.
From: Simon Johnson
Dear officials of the Ministry for the Environment,
Official Information Act request: analysis of water quality monitoring sites making up the water quality categories expressed in lengths of rivers swimmable in Report ME 1293.
On your website on the page "Clean Water package 2017" (http://www.mfe.govt.nz/fresh-water/fresh...) there is a bar chart explaining the target of 90% of rivers and lakes swimmable by 2040 included in the report "Clean Water, ME 1293". The bar chart is also on page 11 of report "Clean Water, ME 1293".
The bar chart shows kilometres (which I assume are lengths of segments of rivers) in each of the five 'quality' categories (Poor, Intermittent, etc) with a time variable which has three bars; "Current", "2030" and "2040".
Will you please provide me with the underlying data; which I assume must be water quality monitoring site results (and future predictions for 2030 and 2040) analysed by the five quality categories and the three time categories "Current", "2030" and "2040". Will you also please include the name or number of each monitoring site, its region and for the "Current" selection, the sampling period for the actual E Coli counts. Please provide this data either in comma separated values or Excel 2007 format via the FYI website.
Finally, will you please confirm if the monitoring site sampling data is sourced from "Larned, S, Snelder, T, Unwin, M, McBride, G, Verburg, P, McMillan, H (2015). Analysis of Water Quality in New Zealand lakes and Rivers: data sources, data sets, assumptions, limitations, methods and results. NIWA Client Report no. CHC2015-033." If there is another source, will you please tell me what that is.
Yours faithfully,
Simon Johnson
From: Ministerials
Ministry for the Environment
Hello Simon,
On behalf of the Ministry for the Environment, I acknowledge receipt of your email of 16 March 2017, requesting the following information:
-Analysis of water quality monitoring sites making up the water quality categories expressed in lengths of rivers swimmable in Report ME 1293.
Your request will be considered according to the provisions of the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA). You will receive a response as soon as is reasonably practicable.
Kind regards,
Ministry for the Environment – Manatū Mō Te Taiao
Website: www.mfe.govt.nz
No.3 The Terrace, PO Box 10362, Wellington 6143
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From: Ministerials
Ministry for the Environment
Good afternoon
Please find attached to this email our response to your request of 15 March.
Kind regards
Executive Relations
Ministry for the Environment – Manatū Mō Te Taiao
Website: www.mfe.govt.nz
No.3 The Terrace, PO Box 10362, Wellington 6143
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Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
"Dear Mr Johnson, Thank you for your correspondence received on 12 April 2017 about the Ministry for the Environment. Your complaint has been allocated reference number: 451466" The Ombudsman.
Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
An investigator from the Ombudsmen's Office has asked a question of clarification about scope.
From: Ministerials
Ministry for the Environment
Dear Mr Johnson
Earlier this year you requested information from us regarding our Clean
Water consultation document.
At the time we referred you to some data that was publicly available, in
the form of graphs on the Ministry for the Environment’s website.
We have now completed further work in this area, and have made some
additional data available on the [1]MfE Data Service
([2]https://data.mfe.govt.nz/). The two data tables that are likely to be
relevant to your request are:
- [3]River water quality for swimming categories, which shows each
river reach, its length in kilometres, its region, and the category
assigned to it (from excellent to poor)
([4]https://data.mfe.govt.nz/table/3620-rive...),
- [5]Lake water quality for swimming categories, which shows each
lake, its perimeter in kilometres, its region, and the category assigned
to it (from excellent to poor)
([6]https://data.mfe.govt.nz/table/3618-lake...).
These data tables may be of interest to you as they contain data that
formed the bar graphs – both the national one you referred to in your
request, and the regional ones that we referred to in our response to you.
They are able to be downloaded in CSV format.
Regards
Executive Relations
Ministry for the Environment – Manatū Mō Te Taiao
Website: www.mfe.govt.nz
No.3 The Terrace, PO Box 10362, Wellington 6143
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Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
The information referred to at www.data.mfe.govt.nz (https://data.mfe.govt.nz/table/3620-rive...) consists of four columns: NZReach (the id number of the river length segment), the segment length in metres, the category (intermittent, poor, fair, good) and the regional council's abbreviation.
It is interesting but it isn't all the information I requested.
I requested "water quality monitoring site results (and future predictions for 2030 and 2040) analysed by the five quality categories and the three time categories "Current", "2030" and "2040". Will you also please include the name or number of each monitoring site, its region and for the "Current" selection, the sampling period for the actual E Coli counts"
The Ministry has not provided all the information I requested.
From: Simon Johnson
Dear Ministerials,
I have replied to this request om 9 June 2017, when I stated:
"The information referred to at www.data.mfe.govt.nz (https://data.mfe.govt.nz/table/3620-rive...) consists of four columns: NZReach (the id number of the river length segment), the segment length in metres, the category (intermittent, poor, fair, good) and the regional council's abbreviation.
It is interesting but it isn't all the information I requested.
I requested "water quality monitoring site results (and future predictions for 2030 and 2040) analysed by the five quality categories and the three time categories "Current", "2030" and "2040". Will you also please include the name or number of each monitoring site, its region and for the "Current" selection, the sampling period for the actual E Coli counts"
The Ministry has not provided all the information I requested. "
Yours sincerely,
Simon Johnson
Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
I received this email today from Claire McClintock – Manager, Executive Relations.
"Dear Mr Johnson,
Following our contact with the Office of the Ombudsman we understand that you would like a copy of the RData file containing raw data from individual freshwater monitoring sites. Please find the RData file attached.
(I have uploaded it to Google Drive; url https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8LhMBA...)
This data informed the modelling carried out by Snelder et. al. (see Strategic assessment of New Zealand’s freshwaters for recreational use: a human health perspective<http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/fres...> for information about the modelling) that was used to develop the graph in the Clean Water consultation document that you asked about in your request on 15 March.
The attached RData file contains data about individual monitoring results for individual sites. Basically it tells you what the E. coli levels were on a specific date and time, at a specific monitoring site.
The file includes the following fields:
· sID ---- Unique site ID
· srcid ---- Region site is located in
· sflag ---- River (r) or Estuary (e)
· river ---- River name
· location ---- Name of site
· nzmge ---- easting
· nzmgn ---- northing
· NZReach ---- REC1 segment identifier
· sDate ---- sample date
· Q ---- Recorded flow when sample was taken, cumecs
· npid ---- NIWA parameter ID (as used in Larned et al. 2015)
· values ---- Parameter value (units are ECOLI (n/100 mL))
Please note the RData file contains raw data supplied by NIWA and has not been quality assurance checked by the Ministry for the Environment. It includes E.coli data from NIWA and Regional Council monitoring sites over the period 1990-2014. If you would like to talk to someone from MfE about the data, please let me know and I’ll arrange it for you.
This data is only one of many components that was used to develop the model which in turn was used to develop the bar graph you asked about in your original request. There were several steps between the raw data and the modelled outputs; for information about what the model involves please see Strategic assessment of New Zealand’s freshwaters for recreational use: a human health perspective <http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/fres...>."
Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
RData files are specific to the R Programming Language. https://www.r-project.org/
I used this R script;
write.table(WQdailymeansEcoli, file = "WQdailymeansEcoli.csv", sep = ",", col.names = TRUE, qmethod = "double",row.names = FALSE)
to write the RData file to a .CSV file which I uploaded to Google Drive at this url;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8LhMBA...
Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
Here is the WQdailymeansEcoli.rdata file location after uploading it to Google Drive https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8LhMBA...
Here is the WQdailymeansEcoli.csv version location https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8LhMB...
Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
I have set up a Github repository https://github.com/theecanmole/WQ-daily-... for the water quality data.
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Simon Johnson left an annotation ()
The Ministry have refused to provide specific detailed sampling site data on the grounds that it is already available region by region from the "freshwater reforms" web pages. Only regional summaries of lengths of rivers and lakes within the 'quality' categories are available. Their reasoning is spurious. The specific data requested is not on the website. I will complain to the Ombudsmen's Office.
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