Category: Archive

National environmental ratings tools developed: Ten other
projects would be announced in the coming months, Ms Atkinson said. “We
have now developed four national comprehensive environmental rating
tools for office buildings under the Green Star system, for new
building design, existing building refurbishments and tenant fit-outs,
as well as a tool that rates existing buildings and their management
efficiency (to be released in early 2006).”

Other standards: Having finalised a suite of rating tools for
commercial offices, she said, work was under way on other building
classes, including:

• Green Star – Convention design.

• Green Star – Retail design and refurbishment.

• Green Star – Health construction.

• Green Star – Education construction.

The Council has appointed Craig Heaton to chairman at the annual meeting of the three-year group. Mr Heaton,
director of project management at ING Real Estate Development, succeeds
Australand’s managing director, Brendan Crotty, reported The Australian Financial Review (1/12/2005, p.52).

Mr Heaton, overseeing the
$1 billion Waterfront City development at Melbourne Docklands, said he
would focus on working with government and industry bodies “to ensure a
co-ordinated approach that will create incentives and remove barriers
to build green”.

The Australian Financial Review, 1/12/2005, p. 52

Source: Erisk – www.erisk.net 

$20,000 rebates available: The Program provides rebates of up to
$20,000 per pastoral station, community and town that chooses to
install solar pumps and windmills instead of diesel or petrol pumps.
With summer approaching, the time is ripe to be thinking about water
requirements for the months ahead.

High performance and reliabillity: The range of renewable energy
technologies has proven to provide the high level of performance and
reliability sought by farmers for water pumping applications. The
situation of fluctuating fuel prices and supply is another good reason
to consider purchasing a solar or wind powered water pump. Government
rebates to help meet the up-front capital costs of renewable energy
water pumping systems make them excellent alternatives to diesel and
petrol options.

Reductions in maintenance hassles: Farmers and pastoralists who
have installed renewable energy technologies have reported that common
problems associated with diesel and petrol pumps, such as ongoing
operation, maintenance and fuel costs, are reduced where renewable
energy technologies have been installed.

More Information: The Renewable Energy Water Pumping Program is
expected to continue until June 2006. More information: Sustainable
Energy Development Office, visit http://www.sedo.energy.wa.gov.au/pages/rewp.asp or phone Maureen Boyle on 9420 5673.

Farm Weekly, 24/11/2005, p. 20

Source: Erisk – www.erisk.net 

6 hr repair job: The main burst in Eagle St, outside the new
Riparian Plaza development, about 4am, gushing water across nearby
streets. Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said council workers were
at the site by 5am but took six hours to repair the pipe and longer
still to fix the surrounding road.

120,000L lost: More than 120,000 litres flooded out of the water
main in the meantime, which Cr Newman said was “roughly half the
average consumption of a Brisbane home” over a year.

Problem was unavoidable: The 6-inch (15cm)-wide pipe, which
dated to 1908, burst because of corrosion, but Cr Newman said the
problem was unavoidable and defended the council’s maintenance plan.
“We have 6200km of pipes in this city and we replace about 6km every
year,” he said.

The Courier Mail, 29/11/2005, p. 8

Project description: The project includes:

• intake and outlet pipelines to draw raw seawater into the plant and
return seawater concentrate to the ocean (including tunnelling under
Botany Bay National Park);

• pipelines and/ or tunnels from the plant across Botany Bay to the
Sydney Water Corporation water supply system for the distribution of
drinking water;

• pipelines from the plant to Miranda water supply system for the distribution of drinking water;

• connection of the plant to the electricity grid; and

• temporary laydown areas for construction use.

Project site: Kurnell Peninsula and other land is required for
the construction and operation of the seawater intake and concentrate
discharge structures, the desalination plant, and associated potable
water distribution. Lands comprising the bed of Botany Bay for potable
water distribution and State coastal waters to the east of Kurnell
Peninsula for seawater intake and concentrate discharge structures. The
proponent is Sydney Water Corporation. The approval authority is the
Minister for Planning.

Further information and submissions: A copy of the Environmental Assessment may also be viewed on the Department of Planning’s website http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au) or on Sydney Water Corporation’s website http://www.sydneywater.com.au). Your submission must reach the Department of Planning by Friday 3 February 2006. Submissions may be made electronically to desalination@dipnr.nsw.gov.au
or by post to: Kurnell Desalination Submissions, Major Development
Assessment, Department of Planning, GPO Box 39, SYDNEY NSW 2001.

Reference: Enquiries relating to the environmental impact assessment
or planning process may be directed to the Department of Planning on
1300 305 695. Enquiries relating to the project and its implementation
may be directed to Sydney Water on 1800 685 833.

Sound of one hand clapping: Environment Minister Ian Campbell’s
delegation will therefore be reduced to pushing their only idea: reduce
carbon in the sky via business as usual, says Martin Callinan, who
works for the US Democrats and is a former adviser to Federal Shadow
Cabinet Minister Kelvin Thomson.

Emission reduction schedules essential: If climate change is to
be taken seriously, scheduled emission reduction timelines are the
surest path to carbon-lite economic growth, he argues. Not that such
growth is unanimously favoured. Some US neocons hold a muted belief
that climate change will hinder other countries, particularly China and
India, more than it will harm the US.

Unconstructive policy: This backbeat is yet to be carried by
Australia’s conservative bongo drums, but such abject cynicism needs to
be nipped in the bud with the counsel that unconstructive policy never
stands for long.

US automakers fail to hold back the tide: Last week, the big
players in the US auto industry announced that they were laying off
thousands of workers, in large part because of the no-worries attitude
to the price of oil and climate change. This belief, nurtured by
extensive lobbying, facilitated heavy investment in recent years in
infrastructure to produce inefficient sports utility vehicles, whose
competitive qualities are diminishing by the month.

“Degraded object”: It is one thing to lobby for certain ideas
but it is quite another to lobby against physical reality. Australia’s
climate policy has become a degraded object in the eyes of most
Australians and most of the world. What matters most now is how soon we
can find the domestic resolution to reduce our greenhouse gas
emissions.

Reconciling the irreconcilable: “Environment Minister Campbell
stands astride a proverbial melting crevasse. In Montreal, he needs to
reconcile his party’s conservative attitude with the reality the rest
of the world will be sitting down to vote upon.”

The Canberra Times, 29/11/2005, p. 17

Sudden 30m decline in Helheim glacier: The new evidence from Greenland, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters,
showed a sudden decline in the giant Helheim glacier, a river of ice
that grinds down from the inland ice cap to the sea through a narrow
rift in the mountain range on the east coast. Professor Slawek
Tulaczyk, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, said that the glacier, where it meets the sea,
had dropped 30m this northern summer.

Front of glacier retreats 7km in four years: Over the past four
years, the front of the glacier – which had remained in the same place
since records began – retreated about 7km. As it has retreated and
thinned, the effects have spread inland “very fast indeed”, Tulaczyk
said.

Jakobshavn moves faster than usual: The research echoed
disturbing results from studies on the opposite side of Greenland: the
giant Jakobshavn glacier (Greenland’s biggest at 6.5km wide and 300m
thick) was now moving towards the sea about 40m a year; the normal
annual speed of a glacier is about 30cm. The studies found that water
from melted ice on the surface was percolating down holes in the
glacier until it formed a layer between it and the rock below, slightly
lifting it and moving it to the sea, as if on a conveyor belt.

Gulf Stream could fail this century: This glacier is believed to
be responsible for 3 per cent of the annual rise of global sea levels.
Scientists had already shortened the odds to evens on the Gulf Stream
failing this century. When it failed before, 12,700 years ago, Britain
was covered in permafrost for 1300 years.

The Canberra Times, 26/11/2005, p. B9