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Rivers in the Media

Heavy rains paralyse Philippine capital

PUBLISHED: 07 AUGUST 2012 SOURCE: www.couriermail.com.au

Torrential rain pounding the Philippine capital has paralysed traffic as waist-deep floods trigger evacuations of tens of thousands of Manila residents.

Incessant downpours set off by the seasonal monsoon overflowed major dams and rivers in Manila and nine surrounding provinces and put authorities on alert. The death toll from last week's Typhoon Saola, which battered Manila and the northern Philippines for several days, has climbed to 51.

The head of the government's rescue agency, Benito Ramos, said there are no immediate reports of new casualties after the rains pounded already saturated Manila for more than 24-hours. Vehicles and even heavy trucks struggled to navigate water-clogged roads, where hundreds of thousands of commuters were stranded overnight. Many cars were stuck in the muddy waters.

The La Mesa dam, which supplies water to the capital of 12 million people, spilled excess water for a second time early on Tuesday into the rivers flowing into Quezon city, a middle-class Manila suburb, as well as the neighbourhoods of Malabon, Valenzuela and Caloocan, where several villages are submerged.

Read full article | Images: Typhoon Soola

Arron Wood's 'Firestarter' wins Telstra Business Award

PUBLISHED: 06 AUGUST 2012 SOURCE: www.telstrabusinessawards.com

Arron Wood 's environmental business, 'Firestarter', was awarded one of Victoria's top prizes at the Telstra Business Awards night last week. Arron Wood is a celebrated waterways champion, and his business Firestarter Pty Ltd, which offers communication, management, education, promotion and major event organisation services, was awarded the News Limited Micro-Business Award.

Arron said "We were in some amazing company with the six finalists and that’s why we couldn’t believe when we heard our business announced as the winner... Thanks to Telstra and News Limited for giving us such an opportunity to celebrate!"

Firestarter has a strong emphasis on environmental community interest projects, and furthermore, it designed and runs the highly awarded 'Kids Teaching Kids' Program - a school-based learning model that inspires young people to learn and care for their environment. More than 50,000 children across Australia have now undertaken the program.

Arron’s ‘green’ heritage can be traced back to 2001 when he won the Young Australian of the Year National Environment Award. For his work at Firestarter, Arron won the 2007 Melbourne Business Award for Contribution to the Environment and was selected to complete Al Gore's Climate Change Leadership Program.

Telstra Business Awards | Firestarter Pty Ltd | Kids Teaching Kids

Deculverting map-based website launched

PUBLISHED: 26 JULY 2012 SOURCE: daylighting.org.uk

Deculverting, also known as 'daylighting', involves opening up buried watercourses and restoring them back to more natural conditions. Deculverting has been called the most "radical expression" of river restoration and is often claimed to provide multiple benefits to society, the environment and the economy.

However, as with many other river restoration schemes, the outcomes and objectives of deculverting projects are rarely published. This work is vital and needs to be supported at the national-international levels.

To help address this challenge, an innovative map-based website has been set up where practitioners and researchers working on deculverting projects are encouraged to share case study information in order to help to deliver improved practices and policies to encourage deculverting.

Visit the new website

Read journal article on Daylighting

Environment groups mount legal challenge over BHP's river emissions

PUBLISHED: 19 JULY 2012 SOURCE: Campbell Macarthur Advertiser; Image: Liverpool City Council

NSW Governments have known for a decade about a major toxic plume in the Georges River near Campbelltown from a coalmine owned by BHP Billiton, but have never pressed the company to stop polluting.

Metals such as zinc, copper, nickel and aluminium, as well as elevated levels of arsenic, are much higher than healthy guidelines, and the contamination has seriously damaged the ecosystem of the river for 15 kilometres downstream from the mine, documents obtained by the Herald show. Environment groups have begun a civil court case against BHP Billiton, which operates the West Cliff coalmine near Campbelltown via a subsidiary company.

The court case is brought by the Macarthur Bushwalkers Club.

The Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, gave the Environment Protection Authority a stinging rebuke when she heard about the pollution yesterday.

''The EPA needs to lift their game,'' Ms Parker said. ''We've put them there, and given them increased powers and increased responsibility, and I need to see some action from them.''

Advertisement Earlier yesterday, Ms Parker announced deep staff cuts at the Office of Environment and Heritage but had promised to strengthen the EPA significantly and to crack down on big polluters after last year's Orica scandal.

BHP Billiton received its court summons yesterday and did not respond directly to questions. But it sent a brief statement to the Herald, saying: ''The company complies with environmental regulations and is reviewing the details of this matter.''

A string of correspondence between the company and the EPA goes back as far as 2002, and shows that the regulator had been aware of discharges from the mine and some of its environmental impacts for most of that time.

The discharges from the mine flow into Brennans Creek, a tributary of the Georges River, and contain pollution from coal washing, water that has been pumped out of the mine tunnels, and stormwater runoff.

But the matter became public only because bushwalkers noticed the pollution and arranged for independent tests by Ian Wright, an environmental scientist at the University of Western Sydney.

About two years ago Dr Wright took a group of students and some rudimentary laboratory equipment to the river and has since returned many times to check and recheck the results.

''I thought 'it can't be as bad as it looks'. But I was wrong about that. You could just see the change in the water,'' Dr Wright said. ''It was grey coloured. There was a lot of turbidity and coal ash.''

The results showed startling differences from some of the pristine waterways nearby, on the edge of the Dharawal National Park. The aquatic invertebrates - mainly small insects - that form the basis of the food chain were either very scarce or missing altogether.

''It's knocking around the food chain and the biology in the Georges River,'' Dr Wright said.

''Upstream, we've got the full complement of invertebrates that you would expect to find. Downstream, there are groups missing and others at very low abundance. The invertebrate data is consistent with a very polluted or degraded waterway.''

Read full article

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Rivers in the Media

Heavy rains paralyse Philippine capital

Arron Wood's 'Firestarter' wins Telstra Business Award

Deculverting map-based website launched

Environment groups mount legal challenge over BHP's river emissions

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