Mark Borchardt is a visiting water scientist from the United States Department of Agriculture and he has been shocked by the state of New Zealand’s fresh water.

He came to New Zealand with the impression that it was clean and green but instead has found dirty water.

He has been working in areas in New Zealand that are known to have problems with the water caused by the dairy industry and he describes the quality as very poor.

“Unfortunately where I live we have water that we can’t swim in, I see that also in New Zealand, you have rivers that you can’t swim in.”

Dr Borchardt said New Zealand has a lot of similarities with Wisconsin, his home state, in the level of water contamination related to agriculture.

He has investigated this extensively and said that the expansion of dairy herds and concentration of the animals in this country is what is being experienced in Wisconsin.