Our Mission

“Kaua e kōrero mo te awa, kōrero ki te awa.
Don’t talk about the river, talk to the river.”

Founded in response to the growing water quality crisis, the RiverWatch mission is to help New Zealand understand and manage water quality. RiverWatch is the data centre for organisations, companies, governments, and individuals committed to monitoring our waterways. Our water quality data collection empowers the nation to understand people’s integral connection with our water quality.

Little information is collected about the state of New Zealand’s waterways. Only 8% of rivers and only 5% of lakes are monitored, sampled on average once a month. Traditional sampling and monitoring methods are time-consuming and expensive. The limited data isn’t robust because it isn't collected in real-time.

The best way to observe and monitor water quality changes in real-time is to measure it continuously. Our mission is to enable New Zealanders to do so through our remote, robust monitoring Hardware, real-time Software, and IoT communications Technology.

As a social and environmental enterprise encouraging the collective responsibility of keeping New Zealand’s waterways clean, RiverWatch achieves this by connecting people with water through the data collected from the Waka network.

The success of the documentary led James and Grant to explore ways to help reverse the decline of water quality in Aotearoa, identifying the need for clear and consistent water quality data as a starting point.