Category: Archive

Murray River will stop running if no rain arrives

admin /26 September, 2006

South Australia’s River Murray Minister Karlene Maywald said while the state probably would receive its entitlement flow or just below it this year, next year was looking very grim for irrigators, reported The Advertiser (25/9/2006, p.4).

Worst-case scenario looms in 2007: "It will mean we will probably start the next water year on July 1 in the worst position we’ve been," she said. Under a worst-case scenario of no good rains during summer and autumn, the amount of active storage in the River Murray storages would reach zero by next May, Maywald said.

Murray’s trickle may cease: Flows into the Murray have been at record lows for six years. The river would stop running next year if the rains did not arrive. Severe implications were expected for the River Murray floodplain, Coorong estuary and fish breeding.

Toughest outlook in 41 years: Central Irrigation Trust chief executive Jeff Parish said he had not seen such a grim outlook in 41 years in the industry. "My big fear is for next year if it doesn’t rain in the next two weeks. We are really dependent on a wet winter and spring next year or we will be absolutely desperate," he said.

The Advertiser, 25/9/2006, p. 4

Source: Erisk Net  

Corporate monkeys in house of mirrors

admin /25 September, 2006

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
— H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun, 1920

As Americans waddled into the new century, overweight, overworked, and as self aware as a cloister of sea slugs, so too arrived George W. Bush, affecting his bandy-legged, fake cowboy swagger, to usher in this era of unquenchable consumer craving and perpetual martial emergency.

Currently, we watch as Bush vacillates between chest-puffing belligerence and jaw-gyrating fecklessness. Due to his hapless response to overwhelming events, some commentators have made comparisons to Jimmy Carter. Not true: Carter, as beset by tumult and contretemps as his administration was during the late 1970s, never resembled, as Bush does, a tweaked-out methhead in the throes of a full blown Methamphetamine-induced psychosis.

New pavers to purify run-off

admin /25 September, 2006

By Anna Salleh for ABC Science Online

Recycling plan: One day pavers may be able to collect and purify rainwater. [File photo] (ABC New Media)

Car parks, patios and other paved areas could one day collect rainwater, purify it then channel it to underground tanks for reuse, say researchers.

Professor Simon Beecham, a civil engineer from the University of South Australia, says special porous pavers made of concrete containing specific additives would purify the polluted run-off.

He says the water could then be captured in large underground tanks and be used for irrigation, cleaning and flushing the toilet.

"We’re trying to harvest a resource that we’ve not been able to tap into before," Professor Beecham said.

Roads, driveways, pathways and the like make up 60 per cent of impervious urban surfaces.

The run-off from them causes flooding and pollutes waterways.

$50b Diesel from brown coal scheme to go ahead

admin /24 September, 2006

Anglo American, one of the world’s biggest mining conglomerates, on 21 September secured a 50-year mining licence from the Victorian Government for a $5 billion project to convert brown coal into clean diesel fuel and test technology for burying greenhouse gases, reported The Australian Financial Review (22/9/2006, p. 5).

Industry calls bluff on geosequestration

admin /24 September, 2006

Even as Al Gore was getting saturation coverage in the media, the Australian energy industry was quietly delivering a far more inconvenient truth to the Howard government, wrote Lenore Taylor in The Australian Financial Review(16/9/2006, p. 26).

Warning on carbon capture: In submissions and evidence to a little-noticed parliamentary inquiry, industry leaders warned that investment in so-called carbon capture would never happen unless the government put a price on greenhouse pollution.

Water rustlers active in record dry

admin /24 September, 2006

Rural outlook grim agrees BOM, temps 2ºC above average, August driest period since 1900 and water thefts on the rise
Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Mike De Salis agreed that the outlook was grim for rural producers, reported The Daily Telegraph (23/9/06, p.68). He has forecast above average temperatures until the end of the year.