from Crikey …..

Murray River a toxic open drain – why don’t we care?

Tim Stubbs, Policy Analyst from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, writes:

For an 800km stretch of river people are advised not to enter the water, drink untreated water or bathe in water drawn from the river. Boiling the water does not inactivate toxins. These are the warnings for a river that has not reached the sea for over three years and is so toxic you cannot even wash your face in it.

Which third world nation is so badly abusing their natural resources that they think it is okay to turn a mighty river into what sounds like a stagnant drain? Don’t they understand the importance of a healthy environment and the need to look after something as valuable as a river system? Where will they get their precious clean water from? These poor ignorant people need to make some serious changes.

This river is the Murray. Similar warnings are in place for the lower Darling and the Murrumbidgee.

WHEN DID THIS BECOME OKAY IN AUSTRALIA?

The excuse that comes to mind is the drought. On Tuesday April 7 the Murray Darling Basin Authority released its drought update. It states that the inflow for the period January to March of this year was the lowest in the 117 years of records. The story gets worse. The update goes on to say that the inflow for the last three years is only 46% of the previous three year minimum which was back in the mid 1940’s.

However the drought is only half the story. The update also states that there is 4,100 gigalitres of water held in public storages across the Basin. A check of the Authority’s weekly update shows that in the Murray and Lower Darling alone over 870 gigalitres have been extracted in the nine months since July last year.

Last Tuesday the Authority also released an announcement on the Autumn watering of the Murray Darling "icon sites". Less than four and a half gigalitres of water is going to be shared amongst the ‘icon’ sites across the Basin. Who knows what will happen to all the other wetlands, floodplains and forests of the Basin which are so badly in need of a drink.

In November last year the Council of Australian Governments released a report on the progress with environmental water recovery in the Murray-Darling Basin. In the four years between June 2004 and September 2008 a total of 177.3 gigalitres has been recovered for the environment.

Most of us have no comprehension of how much water is in a gigalitre. Even so, it is easy to see that there is something very wrong.

 

The next excuse is to blame the irrigators. An irrigator is somebody who takes water out of our rivers to grow our food. We expect top quality produce at the lowest price possible. The irrigator is just a cog in the supply chain, just like the truck driver or the guy that lays the fruit out in the supermarket. The large majority of irrigators comply with a set of rules for how much water they can take. These rules are set by the governments we voted into power.

If we no longer want this national treasure to be little more than a toxic open drain we need to reset the system. We need to ensure we have enough water to keep the river, floodplains and wetlands healthy and use what is left to grow more produce with less water. The potential impacts of climate change underline the need to make this adjustment sooner rather than later so that we are in a position to manage out future in a more proactive way then praying for rain.

Resetting the systems sounds like a massive task yet we already have two of the three parts in place. There is $12.8 billion dollars in the Federal Governments' Water for the Future Program, we have the legislation in place to get the job done. The only piece missing seems to be the political will both at the State and Federal level. There is a lot of talk about getting things done but the figures and the algal bloom don’t lie.

Peter Cullen was one of Australia’s greatest water experts. Before he died he said, "I have always felt knowledge was better than ignorance, and we should try knowledge in this country because ignorance hasn’t got us very far."

It seems we are finding it hard to change our habits.

This article was originally published on the Australian Science Media Centre's Science blog.

Gus: The top rant by Alan Jones is just that — a rant...

We all know that we could store "more" water... But in the 1970s it was illegal for anyone in Sydney, even with a garden, to store water (because of mosquitoes), now we are encouraged to store water (tanks equipped with anti-mosquito mesh)...

Meanwhile, Alan Jones raves on why so much water from the Ord river is not used... One has to go to Kununurra and its surroundings to see why...

Back in Sydney, the major extra water supply problem has been to build a pipeline from wherever or to install a desalination plant. On a cost to cost basis, it's equivalent. With the pipes one has to build dams as well... On an environmental basis, a pipeline and dams have the potential to create yet another disturbance in fragiles, yet undisturbed ecosystems. I know, don't tell me, Jones does not care as much about ecosystems as much as he cares about his ratings with the ratbag-right.

A desalination plant is also a disturbance of ecosystem but in an already disturbed ecosystem. And it has the advantage that rain or shine, one gets water nonetheless. Further more, Do we want to see all our valleys become dry, like the Snowy River was for a while or dead-sunk like Lake Pedder in Tasmania? I have seen large dams, not far west of Sydney, down to the bottom mud because there had been no rain to speak of for about four years... Sydney can get rain like you would not believe, but it can be bucketloads and nothing for six months.

Engineering wise, anything is possible but all will be disruptive, like the towns that were drowned by the Snowy Mountains Scheme... Diverting rivers to the west would also encourage more salt to come up from underground. In the Ord River Scheme it was insects that ravaged the crops. This created the need for massive used of pesticides — as well crops demanded the use of massive amounts of fertilisers because the soils are poor in the region. This lead to massive runoffs of crap into the seas and surroundings... Not only that, the process was too expensive and highly uncompetitive on the world market. All this has to be taken into consideration.

The Murray River basin is overused. This was known back in 1949... In the early 1980s I illustrated the problem for publication exposing how crops were affected by salt and low water quality. In the 1990s we had the algal blooms due to run-offs and drought... Blooms which can also appear at sea, encouraged by warmer temperature and onflow of "nutrients", which are mostly excess phosporus from fertilizers — encouraging a particular toxic algal develoment...

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A satellite image has revealed the scale of a vast algal bloom spreading in the Baltic Sea.

The potentially toxic bloom, covering 377,000 sq km, could pose a risk to marine life in the region, warn scientists.

They added that a lack of wind and prolonged high temperatures had triggered the largest bloom since 2005.

The affected area stretches from Finland in the north to parts of Germany and Poland in the south.

The image, captured earlier this month, was recorded by a camera on the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite.

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Gus: In everything humans modify on earth, there is a payoff and a "penalty"... For years, the payoff was more important, thus we paid little attention to the natural concequences of the changes we inflicted. Our modifications were also somewhat within the "natural" processes limits. Now, since the "industrial revolution" the natural penalties from human endeavours have increased, from pollution (see pictures below) to extinction. Not mentioning the ozone layer depletion and global warming. Please note that some pollution is not visible and yet can be more deadly to nature — and humans. These "penalties" are becoming so severe that the shit in our own toilet does not flush out anymore... We have to tread more carefully.

From Gus' private collection of unique pencil drawings — factory by side of pond. c 1860.

From the book World of Wonder — c1930.

For the new century crap, see below:

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

Yes "we" have displaced a lot of our pollution-creating ventures to other shores... but where it is, it still contaminates the rest of the earth.

 

Dengue Fever? What About It, Key West Says

By DENISE GRADY and CATHARINE SKIPP

A woman planning a Florida vacation in Key West called the health department there last week to ask if it were true that the city was being evacuated because of an epidemic of dengue fever.

“No!” Chris Tittel, a spokesman for the Monroe County Health Department, says he told her. “No, no, no, no, no.”

Dengue (pronounced DENG-gay) is a viral illness, spread by mosquitoes, that can cause fever, headaches, body aches and a rash. Symptoms range from mild to severe, although some people have no symptoms.

Without a doubt, there is dengue in Key West, though at 27 known cases last year and 18 so far this year, it is hardly what most people would call an epidemic. But those cases are the first outbreak in Florida since 1934, and some medical experts fear that the disease, once rampant on the Eastern Seaboard, could take hold again.

Parts of the Caribbean and Central America are having epidemics now, but none of those infected in Key West had traveled outside the country. That means they caught the virus locally.

News of the disease has apparently unsettled a few potential visitors. But tourism officials and business owners in Key West are even more unsettled, by the way the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has publicized the cases.

On July 13, the centers issued a press release stating that an estimated 5 percent of Key West’s population showed evidence of recent exposure to the dengue virus. The estimate was based on tests of 240 residents, of whom 13 were positive. The 5 percent figure was reported by many newspapers, including The New York Times.

That news was the last thing the city needed, with the economy already making the usual summer slump in tourism even worse. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has also scared some visitors away, even though the oil has been nowhere near Key West.

“I don’t know if the C.D.C. understands what it potentially has done here,” said Andy Newman, the director of media relations for the Florida Keys and the Key West tourism council. He said he knew of a “smattering” of canceled trips, but suspected more.

Robert Eadie, administrator of the health department, called the disease centers’ report “very alarmist.”

Local officials were irked that the centers had used just 240 people to estimate an exposure rate for the whole city, which has a population of about 25,000.

But scientists involved in the research are sticking to their story. Dr. Harold Margolis, chief of the disease centers’ dengue branch in Puerto Rico, said it was statistically valid to extrapolate from the 240 people tested.

“Somehow the virus is getting there,” Dr. Margolis said.

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In Australia epidemics of dengue occurred in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Australia was considered to be free of local dengue following 1955 (when there had been a large outbreak in Townsville), but in 1981 a major outbreak with an estimated 3,000 infections occurred in northern Queensland, presumably initiated by an infected traveller.

In Australia, there are three possible vectors: Ae. aegypti, whose distribution is restricted to Queensland; Ae. scutellaris, which is present in north Queensland and is a known vector of dengue in Papua New Guinea; Ae. katherinensis, which is found in northern Queensland, the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia but appears to be not an effective vector. Additionally, Ae. albopictus, poses a threat to Australia. It is an important vector that has been introduced from Asia to many countries, as eggs or larvae transported in artificial container habitats such as used motor vehicle tyres, and water barrels on ships. If it was introduced to Australia it is likely it could readily establish and present a threat for dengue transmission.