New research has highlighted an issue hidden beneath our feet. 

A Ministry for the Environment report shows E. coli has been detected in almost half of monitored groundwater sites since 2019. 

Nitrate levels have risen more than a third in the past two decades, and 63% of New Zealand's lakes had poor or very poor health. 

Water NZ CEO Gillian Blythe told Mike Hosking a critical piece of information highlighted by the report is that what we do with some water environments won’t show up for decades. 

She says that things they were doing in the early 2000s are only beginning to appear now, so they need to think about not just the day-to-day decisions, but also the impact on generations and the environment in the future.  

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