Dead fish, dredging and desalination

July 14, 2008 in Rants & Raves
Tags: desalination, dredging, EPA, greenhouse gas emissions, John Brumby, Kevin Rudd, Morris Iemma, NSW, politics, pollution, Port Phillip Bay, WA, Western Australia

Last week the daily papers in Victoria ran stories about dead fish being found in the Yarra River. Even the night’s newscasts featured the story with chilling footage of dead fish being plucked from the river and people fishing being told not to eat the fish they’ve caught. But this there was nothing from the Brumby Government or the Port of Melbourne Corporation. Absolutely nothing.

Lest they possibly raise the spectre of the current dredging activities in the Yarra River contributing to the poisoning of the fish. The amount toxins and their high toxicity is well known and this stuff being dredged up is being deposited in an underwater bund. It seems the so-called highest environmental protection requirements aren’t being met and the independent monitoring is also inadequate. It’s amazing how quick the silence comes to prevent possible angst among citizens concerned about the dredging of the Yarra River and Port Phillip Bay.

More recently it’s been revealed that dolphin researchers have been following dolphins that appear to rely predominantly on Port Phillip Bay for feeding and breeding grounds. The dredging may seriously threaten this dolphin species which is unique, just like the Yangtze dolphin was forced into extinction because of the extreme pollution of the Yangtze River, the extreme volume of water traffic and the damming along its course.

While there are dead fish floating around, the dredging should be halted until the Environment Protection Authority has concluded a thorough investigation. And this leads to another sensitive topic for the Brumby Government, the desalination plant.

But destroying one natural icon isn’t enough for Brumby and his cronies of nature-haters.

It seems to be the thing at the moment to build desalination plants as the only answer to solving water problems being experienced in WA, NSW and Victoria.  And here is another massive waste of energy and water.  Instead of investing in water saving technologies, requiring new developments to have water saving technologies or other such things, the wisdom of these pathetic governments is to build something that will further pollute and destroy.

Prime Minister Rudd should have spent more time in Australia telling state governments to combat climate change instead of flying around the world to tell the G8 to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.