Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 6, 2006

Brisbane to Vote on Waste Water Recycling

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I live in Brisbane, in south east Queensland, and the city has historically relied on three dams for all its water. Not so many years ago politicians boasted that the dams were big and we would always have enough water.

Now we have level 4 water restrictions, which means that if I want to water my garden I can only do it on Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday during specified hours and with a single bucket. All hosing is banned. Sprinklers are something we have already almost forgotten ever existed. It really is bizarre that gardening should come to this.

I have written that Brisbane should recycle its water and build a desalination plant or two, click here for the piece entitled ‘No More Excuses’ originally published in the local newspaper, The Courier Mail.

The Australian Water Association has said that if Brisbane recycled its water there would be 40 percent more water in the system. I am all for it, but the politicians have been dragging their feet while claiming the water crisis is all the fault of climate change. We have had a few dry years, but there are also lots more people. Indeed infrastructure has not kept pace with population in this fastest growing region in Australia.

Then just the other week the Queensland Labor Premier, Peter Beattie, announced that on 17 March 2007 south east Queensland residents will vote on the permanent introduction of recycled water into existing water supplies.

Just today the leader of the Liberal Party, Bruce Flegg, launched a water options website at www.wateroptions.net. There is some good information there about water recycling, water in south east Queensland and attitudes to recycling.

Interestingly local ABC radio has run a poll on water recycling and last time I looked most people (74 percent) just wanted the government to get on with the job of water recycling: http://www.abc.net.au/brisbane/vote/total.htm .

Anyway, if you live in Queensland you can have your say and vote at: http://wateroptions.net/campaigns/1/ .

But if you just want to be really scared click here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001514.html .

New Picture Book on Buyat Bay

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Buyat Bay on the Island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, is perhaps best known as the place where Canadian mining giant Newmont dumped tailing from a gold mine allegedly polluting the bay and poisioning the local villagers.

Increasingly it appears the poisonings were a fabrication. I summarized the allegations brought against the company’s President Richard Ness and against the mining company in a recent piece for On Line Opinion entitled ‘The Campaign Against Mining’.

Buyat Bay Blue Fish Blog.JPG
A little blue fish swimming in Buyat Bay.

Several senior mining executives were thrown in jail, accused of deliberately poisoning the bay. Once out of jail one of them set about photographing the corals and associated biodiversity of Buyat Bay. A book in Indonesian was published earlier in the year. Now there is an english version and Richard Ness’s son has had it uploaded to his website.

Here’s a note from Eric:

“A book entitled An Underwater Guide To Buyat Bay and Surrounding Areas North Sulawesi was just published by the South Minahasa & North Sulawesi Tourism Office. I got permission to post the entire book on the site. I would like to invite you to take a look at this because one, the photography is extremely beautiful showing a wide variety of marine life and two, I see this as additional evidence of how ridiculous the charges are against my father.

This book was written by Jerry Kojansow, David Sompie, Laurentius Th. X Lalamentik, Msc and Djonline Emor, Msi. The beautiful photographs where provided by Jerry Kojansow and Robert Humberson.

The irony in this is that two of the authors, David Sompie and Jerry Konjansow – who I have partly dedicated this web site to – were two of Dad’s staff who were declared suspects and spent 32 day unjustly detained early on in the same cells with terrorist involved in the Australian Embassy bombing. Even after such treatment, these fine individuals still performed their civic duty (in collaboration with dedicated people from the marine department of the local University and the provincial government) doing their part in promoting tourism and sharing the natural beauty of Northern Sulawesi and Buyat Bay for all the world to see. They did not do so for money or personal fame, they did so to try and correct the damaged image caused by baseless allegations of pollution in what is truly a non-polluted pristine marine environment. It is the image of North Sulawesi that they are trying to preserve.

Check out the book: http://richardness.org/media/buyatbay/”

The photographs are spectacular. Once uploaded you can ‘turn the page’ by clicking on the top right corner of the image. Click here to get started.

Richard Ness was in court again yesterday. But I’ve no news as to how it all went. A final judgement is expected in January.