New Zealand has been told to act now to protect the country's lakes from toxic farming chemicals entering waterways.
Speaking on the opening day of the Rotorua Lakes 2008 symposium yesterday, Danish water quality expert Erik Jeppesen said that years of farming meant large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus would continue leaching into waterways.
Dr Jeppesen, from Denmark's National Environmental Research Institute, said tougher national regulation on farmers was needed to limit water degradation in the future, the New Zealand Herald reported.
"Farming is an industry and has to be treated as an industry," he said.
"Don't repeat our mistakes because you have a lot to clean up afterwards."
Dr Jeppesen said Denmark had introduced measures including taxing fertilisers and reducing stock density which had gone some way to cleaning up its waterways, and recommended New Zealand follow the example.
The symposium, hosted by the Lakes Water Quality Society, finishes today.
The first day coincided with the signing of a deed of funding to help to clean up Rotorua's worst-polluted lakes, which suffer from toxic algal blooms resulting from high nutrient levels.
The deed sets out a $72.1 million commitment from the Government to improve the water quality in Lakes Rotorua, Rotoiti, Rotoehu and Okareka in the next 10 years.
NZPA