A battle's flared between Federated Farmers and Greenpeace.

Federated Farmers says the activist group should be stripped of its charitable status for defacing Gore's iconic brown trout statue to highlight how dairy pollution's affected the town's water.

A three-day do-not-drink notice was issued Friday, because of elevated nitrate levels.

Southland Federated Farmers president, Jason Herrick, says Greenpeace should behave better.

"What they were doing had the potential to destroy a pretty important monument in Gore."

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