I read this stat  today.  And believe it or not we are now building huge desalination plants so that we can burn fossil fuels in order to desalinate more water to go down the toilet!

And when you save water you also save energy, because water requires enormous amounts of energy to pump around the country and to dispose of.

In Hong Kong at least part of the city toilets are on a separate, unfiltered water supply.

Why can’t we use treated grey-water for toilet flushing?  It is legal in some places but not others.
There are some effective treatment systems for the grey water, because stored grey water can build up a high bacterial content.

Dual flush toilet cisterns have been around for many years but are still not universal.

Some places use stored rainwater to run the toilets and washing machine.

Coming from Adelaide, at the bottom end of the Murray, I treasure rainwater for drinking and bathing as Murray water causes my skin to get bad excema.

Clearly there needs to be clean gutters and sealed tanks that have the bottom 15 cms or so pumped out each year but there are increasing numbers of effective gutting solutions available now.  And some industrial areas may be unsuitable for rainwater collection for drinking.

I have twice lived in places with no water supply other than collected rain water and that is by far my favourite water resource.

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Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Meet me at EcoForum in Sydney at the end of the month
8.30 – 5.30 TUESDAY 23^rd FEBRUARY 2010

You are invited to register to attend this special workshop

… it is FREE

To everyone concerned about what is happening with water in Australia, this special workshop could be pivotal in a growing awareness campaign.

We all get bogged down in our local issues. The injustice, the stupidity, the arrogance and the resulting depression, lives destroyed, land destroyed. What a waste we say. Why can’t the powers that be see it we ask? There are great campaigns raging; and a great success last year for the Mary River, but in the main the situation seems to be getting worse.

There is a great opportunity here, provided by the organizers of Ecoforum, to bring the disparate groups together discussing the isues and determining a way forward. A way that that will unite the voices. A way that will be heard.

If you think that your organisation can win by itself then that is great. This forum might not be for you. If you think that you need help and support then this forum is definitely for you.

To everyone concerned about what is happening with water in Australia, this special workshop could be pivotal in a growing awareness campaign.

(Sponsored by International Water Centre www.watercentre.org)

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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We pollute our air, our rivers, our seas and out soils.  Then we wonder why we have problems.

Even in the very remote possibility that the sceptics are right – which is totally unlikely as it is happening faster than expected according to the IPCC; we still need to take greenhouse gasses seriously:
We have two forces jeopardising sensible action on climate change:
1.    The global financial mess
2.    and the negative influence of the oil, gas and coal industries who ontinue to fight against any regulations.

Some of the other serious impacts of global pollution are:
Superphosphate which is made water soluble by treating it with sulphuric acid is rapidly converted back to insoluble to calcium phosphate and is not available to plants and in iron-rich soils it is just as rapidly converted to equally insoluble iron phosphate, and a related action occurs in volcanic soils.  CSIRO estimated many years back that ten BILLION dollars worth of P is now held in our soils.

And superphosphate releases it’s sulphuric acid which to accumulates in the subsoil of many soil types to prevent root growth and kill earthworms and it flows through free draining soils hence our Murray mouth acid sands.

Ocean acidification is also a major issue for this century and its impact on the food industry and world food supply.  This is due both to atmospheric CO2 and the breakdown products of chemical fertilization. Superphosphate, ammonium sulphate and urea are the main contributors.  Examples of this damage are
•    Destruction of reefs off Bali caused by fertilised rice paddy run off
•    Barrier Reef damage caused by hyper-nutrition and acidification
•    The acid sands in the lower Murray
Overloading the earth’s nitrogen cycle.  There are huge dead patches in oceans from over use of fertilizer.
The natural soil system is simple: more carbon in soil = more bacteria = more nitrogen = more plant growth = more carbon that is tied up and not in the air.  And this encourages earthworms which aerate soil.

Jelly fish are on pest species that benefits from ocean acidification and over fishing.  Interestingly there is are low numbers of jellyfish/stingers around the waters of Vanuatu and Vanuatu bans the use of chemical fertilization.  Is this a coincidence?

I used to swim competitively in masters swimming and participated annually in the swim around Delphin Island in West Lakes, Adelaide.  The jelly fish there (non stinging) were so thick in some patches that it was actually like clawing your way through jelly rather than swimming.  Totally gross!  The lake was surrounded by heavily fertilised manicure lawns as well as being at the end of one of Adelaide’s main stormwater drainage systems.

We pollute our air, our rivers, our seas and out soils.  Then we wonder why we have problems including climate change, ocean acidification and pest species.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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How many of you are keeping up to date with planned desalination plants?  On the face of it it seems a great idea , especially in Adelaide where there is a water problem.

But I have been worried for a long time about the impact of releasing highly saline brine into marine areas with sensitive populations and this is especially true of the proposed desalination plant near Whyalla where the water is already excessively saline because it is a reverse estuary.

However I was recently told that as a response to a perfectly sensible question about why the desalination plant for Adelaide can’t be combined with the salt evaporation ponds, the minister said this was because poisons are added to the brine from the desalination plant that would make it impossible to use the salt for human consumption.

This begs the question of why poisons that are too harmful for humans are acceptable for our much more sensitive marine life.

It sounds like back to the bad old days when pouring things into the sea was acceptable as out of sight, out of mind ruled.

Government needs to be accountable for the same standards of environmental accountability as businesses.  There needs to be honesty about what is added, what is discharged and what the impacts of the discharge are.  We should also be told the costs, the energy and greenhouse gas emission implications.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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There is a serious risk of the riverbanks collapsing along the lower Murray due to the extreme low water levels and a hazard plan is being drafted for properties between Lock One and Wellington along the lower Murray.

The Department says areas of high risk have been cordoned off, with signs erected to warn people of the dangers.

Earlier this week Water Department officers visited the residents at Sturt Reserve and Caloote to urge them to leave while investigations are carried out, after reports of cracks in the soil and bubbles in the water.

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Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Adelaide’s Parklands Preservation Association has objected to a storm water harvesting plan for the city’s south parklands as part of the Brownhill Creek-Keswick Stormwater Project.

A spokesman for the group said that they think holding stormwater in the south parklands would be a health risk because “run-off from the roads has got bacteria from human activity, pets and the like and contact with water containing pathogens is not suitable, particularly for young people,” he said.

Dearie me it seems that the Parklands Preservation group have not heard the research that has been available for 20 years showing that well set up wetlands remove 90% of bacteria, nutrients and silt from the storm water.  Maybe they should visit established wetlands like those at Salisbury and Urbrae which are very attractive and do a great job of cleaning up water.

Short of legislating for nappies on dogs, wetlands are the best way by far to clean up stormwater.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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The Murray-Darling Association is holding its annual conference in Adelaide.  Average storage levels across the basin are just 23 per cent and delegates feel that water security should be more important than climate change and emission trading.

The delegates will be taken on a tour of the drought-hit lower lakes region at the Murray mouth for a first-hand look at the dilemmas facing downstream users because understanding each other’s plight is the key before decisions are taken to present to state and federal governments.

The organiser stated that there will be differences of opinions and people will have their own issues in their own area but there needs to be conversation, compassion and understanding across the entire basin.

This dialogue and a visit to the lower lakes is very valuable but to claim that water security should be more important than climate change is wrong in my opinion.  Our water problems and drought are a probable result of climate change and we must come to consensus with the rest of the world in December.  That has to be our major focus but establishing an understanding of needs across the basin is vital to sorting out the Australia wide sharing of resources that we were promised before the last election.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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In New South Wales there is an area at the head of the Murray Darling system with deep valleys of rich volcanic soil and a wonderful aquifer that has supported the farm production through all the droughts that have happened else.  This is an area that generates a high export income.  Now there is a real bunfight developing between these farmers and the coal industry.

At a time when the world is looking to reduce our carbon footprint and use less coal use why would the coal industry want to pollute and aquifer that drains into our major and dying Murray Darling river system and seriously damage a valuable export industry?  This in the same week that TRU energy has stated they are no longer doing long term maintenance on coal fired power stations.  This is an energy management issue.  We do not need new coal mines.  We already have the world’s biggest reserves of coal.  Give it a break guys.  Think about a little environmental sustainability.

One of my farmer clients in Queensland is having a similar problem there where the miners are seriously polluting the river system.

Business, what ever their size needs to look at the all the activities that can have a harmful environmental impact and manage or eliminate these.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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The biggest breakthrough in improving human health has been providing drinking water that has been separated from waste water.  There are nasties in the gut that we do not want to circulate in our drinking water.  Checking that our drinking water is clean and safe to drink has been mainly by checking on the presence or absence of E. coli but has now been superseded by a preventive risk management approach.  Water shortages and a need to use recycled water has prompted a big push to improve the tools needed to ensure our drinking water is safe.

Essential first steps are providing a quantifiable definition of safety. Which is based on recognising that not all pathogens are created equal, some only cause mild diarrhoea while others such as E. coli  0157 can cause more severe symptoms including haemolytic uraemic syndrome and death.  And the definition of safety provides the goalposts that need to be achieved. using a risk management system. For use of recycled water include either reducing pathogen concentrations using treatment OR by reducing exposure through mechanisms such as how the water is used (eg, drip versus spray irrigation), applying buffer zones between points of use, and public access or crop restrictions (eg, irrigation of fruit trees rather than lettuce).

The guidelines describe typical reductions achieved by various types of treatment and exposure controls. This dual approach means that even sewage with relatively low levels of treatment can be used safely, provided appropriate end-use or on-site restrictions are applied. However, high-exposure uses such as dual reticulation will always rely on high levels of treatment.

In the risk management approach, monitoring focuses on checking that control measures work effectively. It relies on recoding contact time with chlorine which correlates with inactivation of enteric bacteria and viruses and removing turbidity by filtration correlates with removal of particles such as Cryptosporidium. The advantage of this approach is that the indicators can be measured continuously using automatic monitoring devices connected to alarm systems rather than relying on sampling.

This is based on a much more detailed paper by David Cunliffe provided courtesy of The Australian Society for Microbiology.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Former Victorian water minister, John Thwaites has changed his mind since he supported Victoria’s desalination plant costing more than $3 billion and grossly energy hungry using 90 megawatts of power a year, now he is Chair of Monash University’s Sustainability Institute. In his new role he is born again as a stormwater supporter and says “stormwater harvesting systems can function with very low energy use and provide relatively low cost water.”

South Australia is having a similar discussion with the opposition wanting stormwater to be collected and used but the government choosing desalination.

We hear that storm water quality is too low but no one worries about river water as a water source. I am unsure how water gets into rivers if it is not storm water first.

Passing storm water through well designed wetlands removes 90% of nutrients, bacteria and silt from the water passively at minimal cost and imitates what nature did before reed-beds were thought to be untidy.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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