Britons are fighting a losing battle to keep their iconic river clean amidst ineffective infrastructure and environmental challenges. Elizabeth Pearson reports.

The iconic river has become a dumping ground for junk and sewage waste. Image: UK Environmental Agency.

Beneath the turbid surface of the Thames lurks a “national scandal”, according to the Chairman of London’s Consumer Council for Water.

Oblivious to this, 30 Greenwich teenagers are up to their knees in mud on an icy Winter morning, fishing rubbish out London’s famous river. Siblings Kippa and Jess Brand have braved the plummeting mercury to wade into the muck exposed by the low lapping tide at Bell Water Gate. This is one of a series of community events run by the environment charity Thames 21 in a bid to remove superficial pollution from the riverbank.

“We’ve found heaps and heaps of trolleys and tyres,” 17-year-old Jess exclaims enthusiastically as she slips out of a pair of grimy wellies. “You wouldn’t believe how heavy everything was- so much heavier than it looked.”

“You burn extra calories because it’s for charity,” event coordinator Abigail Kelly shouts out across her shoulder, hefting spades and shovels from the pebbly rind of riverbed into a nearby truck.

Thames 21 has been campaigning for 16 years to clean up the shores of the river. Within the space of 90 minutes, these teenagers have managed to dig one shopping trolley, twenty abandoned roads cones, ten tyres and a stack of miscellaneous debris out of the quagmire.

“People just throw rubbish into the Thames. We find hoovers and irons and random things- I end up having a treasure chest on desk at work,” Ms Kelly said.

“Last week, we found a grenade which still had the pin in it so we had to call the police. We find lots of guns and knives and second world war shells rolling around.”

But apathy toward the health of the Thames is hard for these volunteers to swallow.

“People can’t think that they get to dump their stuff in the river, like some sort of tip,” Kippa said. “This river is part of our city and we have to look after it. If fools keep this up, there will be nothing left of it.”

And these students are only scratching the surface of the problem.

Something more sinister lurks upstream.

More than 32 million cubic metres of untreated waste overflows from London’s sewers into the Thames every year- enough to fill the 02 arena 15 times, the Environment Agency estimates.

The city relies upon a Victorian drainage system that collects both sewage and water runoff. During heavy rainfall, the increased water volume drives this system to full capacity. Excess waste is discharged straight into the Thames at 57 different outlets.

“The state of the Thames currently is not acceptable,” said the Chairman of the Consumer Council for Water London Committee, David Bland. “It is a national scandal that this river is in this condition and the eco standard must be raised very much far above where it is now.”

Anglers, canoeists and rowers have consistently reported raw sewage floating on the river’s surface over the last two years. Recreational users are often forced to avoid certain sections of the Thames during heavy rain because of the sludge generated.

But the Thames is naturally turbid so these contaminants are, more often than not, invisible in the swirling, clouded depths.

This biological waste is not just aesthetically displeasing, it poses significant health risks.

A study by the London Port Health and Environment Services Committee in 2007 found that “there is evidence of an elevated risk to the health of recreational users of the upper river for two to four days following combined sewer overflow discharges of raw sewage”.

Illnesses including gastrointestinal bugs can result from immersion in or ingestion of contaminated water, though the Environment Agency admits it’s difficult to gauge the exact number of people directly affected.

The report concluded that there was “evidence that background concentrations of microbiological organisms exceed the World Health Organisation recommended levels for recreational use at Kew Barnes and Putney”.

These overflows are also in breach of the European Union’s Waste Water Directive, which stipulates that sewage must be treated before it is discharged.

The EU’s environment watchdog launched legal action against the British government in October 2009, describing the sewage overflows as “too frequent and in excessive quantities”.

Ironically, the river was once a great success story for England.

The quality of London’s freshwater supply had been vastly improving since 1990, according to the Environment Agency. But recent levels are declining once more.

A population explosion is continuing to put pressure on the city’s outdated drains.

The nation’s largest water company Thames Water admits the infrastructure is struggling to keep up.

“Despite vast improvements to the river, there remains a big problem- London’s sewage system is Victorian. It was built in the 1850s and 60s by Sir Joseph Bazalgette following the Big Stink when Parliament had to reconvene at Oxford because the stench from the Thames, then an open sewer and biologically dead, simply overwhelmed the Palace of Westminster,” Senior Press Officer Simon Evans explained.

“Bazalgette’s combined human waste and surface water run-off system fed into two big interceptor sewers, one north of the river and the other to the south, which each fed to Beckton and Crossness respectively before pumping the effluent out to sea with the prevailing tide. The upshot was a cleaner Thames and a far healthier, less stinky Thames.”

The system features 57 combined sewer overflows designed to spill into the tideway section of the river when severe rainfall drove the pipes beyond full capacity.

Last century, this was a “once in a blue moon” occurrence, Mr Evans said.

Now, it’s a different story.

“Since then, London’s population has more than doubled, much of the city has been concreted over and climate change is bringing less frequent but heavier downpours – all putting huge strain on our 150-year-old drains.”

“Untreated sewage is ending up in the river on an increasingly frequent basis, not only from the sewer system but also from the five major sewage works along the tidal Thames, which struggle to cope with today’s heavy flows. And this can’t be right,” Mr Evans said.

As little as 2mm of rain is enough to trigger an overflow. This is now happening, on average, at least once a week.

Britain’s Environment Agency has floated a £2.2 billion super-sewer as the most viable solution. Plans are currently on the table to build two new pipelines beneath the river and transport excess waste away from the city. But Britain’s water authorities remain divided over the scheme dubbed the “Thames Tideways Tunnels”.

And as long as the government hesitates, budding environmentalists like Jess and Kippa Brand are fighting a losing battle to keep this primary waterway clean.

Though pulling rusty shopping trolleys out of the river won’t change the sewage issue, the siblings are determined to do what they can to help.

“Like anywhere else, the Thames has its own ecosystem- it’s 215 miles long, runs through urban and rural environments, contains both fresh and salt water, and is home for many species of birds and fish,” Jess said.

“If we pollute it here, then the consequences will be felt downstream as well- it’s our responsibility to look after the river as much as anywhere else, because it’s not like we’re the only ones using it.”

Elizabeth Pearson is a UTS Geji reporter on exchange in London. For more stories on the River Thames, visit Elizabeth’s blog.

The New South Wales government, Australia, is considering amendments to the National Parks and Wildlife Act that will make it easier for developers and tourism operators to use parks land. Opponents to the changes say the amendments will lead to the commercialisation of New South Wales’ wilderness areas. Proponents argue that increased tourism will bring conservation dollars to help manage the parks. Rebecca Leaver, Amanda Hoh, and Nick Evershed reporting.

]]> http://www.reportage-enviro.com/2009/12/room-with-a-view/feed/ 1 http://www.reportage-enviro.com/2009/11/the-battle-for-sydney/ http://www.reportage-enviro.com/2009/11/the-battle-for-sydney/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:21:25 +0000 admin http://www.reportage-enviro.com/?p=1445
Welcome to the harbour city - home of the opera house, the bridge and traffic chaos. A battle is on for not only the streets of Sydney but the environment, the economy and just common sense. Will cars and bikes ever get along in Sydney? Strap on your helmet and watch the Battle of Sydney unfold, a documentary by Matt Davis.]]>

Welcome to the harbour city – home of the opera house, the bridge and traffic chaos. A battle is on for not only the streets of Sydney but the environment, the economy and just common sense. Will cars and bikes ever get along in Sydney? Strap on your helmet and watch the Battle of Sydney unfold, a documentary by Matt Davis.

Norway’s Sami reindeer herders face an uncertain future, with the prospect of a changing climate and increasing development due to oil resources in the Arctic. Lauren Day and Sophie Tarr report on how a way of life is changing for the Sami people.

GEJI reporters and UTS Journalism students Lauren Day and Sophie Tarr produced this report while on exchange at the University of Helsinki Swedish School of Social Sciences and Sami College.

As a country famed for sunburnt lands and abundant sunshine, Australia has great potential for a successful solar energy industry, yet is still falling behind countries with less natural resources. Stephanie Kok reports.

Despite Australia's abundant natural resources, the solar industry is still falling behind. Picture: Gerson.

In the most recent Federal budget, the Australian Government allocated just $1.5b to solar energy, an industry that according to renewable energy experts is in need of immediate and significant funding and government support.

In order to make solar technologies competitive against the polluting fossil fuels and other renewable energy technologies, a significant amount of investment still needs to be made, as solar is trailing behind other energy sources.

“The scale of investment needed for concentrating solar power down to the levels of say, wind power today, will be of the orders of 5-10,000 MW and several billion dollars of investment incentives,” said Project Leader of CSIRO’s National Solar Energy Centre, Wes Stein.

Chris Riedy, Research Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures, says more should be done to make full use of the abundant natural resources in Australia, as the country is in a good position to develop industry leadership around renewable energy and solar technologies.

“We’ve got some real natural advantages in Australia that they don’t have in Europe in terms of our access to solar resources and to wind resources and to geothermals. We’re really blessed with great renewable energy resources so that means we should be able to deliver renewable energy probably cheaper than Europe would be able to,” he said.

Similarly, Mr Stein says that pursuing solar energy is best for Australia, given the natural resources in relation to sunlight.

“The solar resource is so huge in Australia and you’ll never run out of sites,” said Mr Stein. “I think there are so many energy options but Australia can’t pursue all of them, it’s actually gotta pursue the ones that are best for Australia and given our solar resource, solar should be one of them.”

Yet while other countries are investing heavily in alternative energy in an attempt to combat climate change, the Government is still backing the notion of ‘clean coal’, and Carbon Capture and Storage programs which have proven to be ineffective in reducing greenhouse emissions.

“It’s really supporting the coal industry to develop new technologies so that they can become cleaner, when they’ve been earning a lot of money for a long time and have known that climate change is a big problem for a long time,” said Mr Riedy.

This is despite the economic advantages of renewable energy technologies such as solar and geothermal. According to a DESERTEC-Australia researcher quoted by Newnet, these technologies will become rapidly cheaper over time, and more reliable, due to innovation.

Richard Corkish, Head of the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at UNSW, remains doubtful about Carbon Capture and Storage.

“I hope it works…because while we’re putting a lot of resources into that, then we have to understand that we’re diverting those resources from other potential uses of those resources and we’re putting a lot of investment in the expectation that it’s going to work and at the moment, we don’t know,” he said.

According to Greens MP John Kaye, the budget is a step forward for renewable energy, however the $2b investment in clean coal makes it still too supportive of the coal industry.

“Our concern remains that that’s highly speculative research, money that should be going into solar and wind. Instead, it’s going into clean coal which is very unlikely to ever return any value on the investment being made,” he said.

Despite this, Mr Corkish said that any amount allocated to solar is more than the industry ever imagined.

“I’m very happy to have the $1.5 billion to [solar] renewable energy, and that’s bigger and better than we’ve ever dreamt of having before in previous budgets,” he said.

The Government’s budget and plans to build up to four large solar plants are seen as positive steps compared to the movements to block solar power development by the Howard government, yet it is still not enough to make solar competitive against other forms of technology, and on a global scale.

“Certainly the recent announcements are showing the sorts of foresight that I think that the solar energy industry needs in Australia,” said Mr Stein. “I’d say one other thing though, just to build four big solar plants is not going to be enough to kick start an industry in Australia. Four big plants will not be enough to create the critical mass needed for plants to keep on just rolling out after that.”

Mr Riedy is hopeful about the change of government, and highlights the latest budget as a good sign.

“Now, hopefully things have changed under the Rudd Government. They’ve only had two budgets since they’ve come in, so they haven’t had a lot of time to announce things themselves, so it’s great to see something in the second budget that is a very significant support for renewable energy,” he said.

In NSW, there is also concern that the State Government’s support of coal will mean that the state will miss out on potential funding for solar development, as there has been insufficient support for other renewable energy technologies in the past.

“NSW has about 3% of the nation’s installed wind capacity. We ought to have about 30% of the nation’s wind capacity based both on population and on the quality of the wind resource in NSW. NSW government cannot see beyond coal and burning coal to produce electricity, so what we’ve seen increasingly in NSW has been a set of policies that are based around encouraging coal,” said Mr Kaye. “That means that we are likely to miss out on a lot of potential investment value of the Federal Government’s funding.”

European countries such as Denmark and Germany have already invested large amounts in renewable energy production, with Germany holding the title of the global leader in solar-generated electricity, despite its limited natural solar resource.

Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety states in its Annual Report on Research Funding in the Renewable Energies Sector, that the German government spent 161.2 million euros (approximately $277 million) on solar energy in 2008 alone, emphasising its dedication to the technology right now, unlike the Australian Government’s $1.5 billion over six years.

Given Australia’s potential to become a world leader in solar energy production, it is still falling behind the mark, in the wake of countries less likely and with less natural sunlight. Some hope seems to remain with the Rudd government, with a number of policies aimed at making better use of natural resources, however the strong attachment to coal will prove to be detrimental.

Visit Stephanie Kok’s website for more information and latest updates in solar and renewable energy.

The NSW government is exposing children to significant health risks by sanctioning an incomplete clean up of industrial contamination on the Parramatta River, according to scientific experts and residents. Elizabeth Pearson investigates.

The sand at Kendall Bay is toxic, according to scientific experts and local residents. Picture: Elizabeth Pearson.

Dangerous pollutants and carcinogens leached into Kendall Bay from the Mortlake gas works during 85 years of heavy activity on the foreshore.

The state health department told a community meeting last year that 30 days exposure per annum to sand at the Kendall Bay beach was a serious concern for children under the age of five, exceeding all reasonable health levels.

But locals are outraged that the same beach has now been excluded from remediation plans put forward by Jemena, the company that’s inherited legal responsibility for the cleanup.

“Only a very little part of Kendall Bay is to be remediated and the area does not even cover the pollution at the southern end of the bay between the mangrove stand and the seawall,” said Greg McGrath of the Breakfast Point Residents Group Inc.

“This is the most visually polluted part of the whole area, it is chemically as bad as the worst of the bay and is often walked over by teens and children, posing great risk to them. We are not happy with the proposal.”

Risk assessments dating back to 1999 indicate the presence of high levels of toxins including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), benzene, sulfur and ammonia across the 3.3 hectare marine site to a depth of more than 1.6 metres.

Unsuspecting families who play on the sand, in the water or the mangroves face increased health risks from PAHs, which are described by the State of Marine Environment Report for Australia as “environmentally suspect” and “relatively toxic” to humans.

Benzene is known to cause leukemia in cases of extreme exposure. Ingestion or short-term exposure to the toxin can cause symptoms like vomiting, dizziness, convulsions, said the Australian National Toxins Network.

The Department of Environment and Climate Change maintains health risks are unlikely.
“Any serious health risks assume long term exposure where contaminated mud is not washed off the body for a number of hours and with regular and frequent exposure over a number of years,” said Senior Public Affairs Officer Emma Petersen.

But locals are concerned that remediation plans proposed will not rectify the full extent of contamination.

A spokesperson for Jemena has said these concerns are unwarranted.

“Quantitative human health risk assessments were carried out using very conservative assumptions and on the basis of the findings, the remediation areas were determined and agreed with DECC as posing areas of potential risk,” they said. “Concerned members of the community should read the assessments thoroughly to gain a full understanding of how the current remediation plans were arrived at.”

But the size of proposed cleanup sites has been downgraded over a series of reports.

The Environmental Protection Agency declared all sediment within 200 metres of the gasworks shore a remediation site in 2004 as it “poses a significant risk of harm”.

It mandated that 256 000 square metres of river bed in Kendall Bay and the adjoining Parramatta River must be left undisturbed or else cleaned up.

But remediation work is now necessary due to a submission by the developer of the Breakfast Point residential complex to build a 177 berth marina in Kendall bay.

Construction and marine traffic would stir up the pollutants buried in the sand.

Yet Jemena’s Final Preliminary Environmental Assessment plan released last year would rectify less than 4 percent of the area stipulated by the EPA.

The report, produced by the environmental engineering consultant group URS Australia, earmarks two sites within the bay for rectification, covering just 9 300 square metres.

“The proposal does not address the contamination over the bay and river area covered by the EPA remediation order,” Mr McGrath said.

Initial health risk assessments stated that visitors to the beach and mangroves were at risk of exposure to toxins buried in sand and silt up to one metre below the tide line.

The latest proposed remediation site now excludes most of the mangrove and southern beach area. This is despite locals reporting lumps of coal washing up onto the shore during high tides and rough seas.

The Department of Environment and Climate Change approved Jemena’s plans on December 28, 2008.

“The original area where the remediation order applies does not necessarily equate with the area that requires remediation as the remediation process is focused on protecting public health ie areas accessible by the public that could be disturbed in day to day activity such as swimming or wading,” said Ms Petersen. “The sandy beach area does not require remediation at this stage as the levels of contamination have been found to be very low and do not pose a risk of harm in day to day activity.”

But an independent review commissioned by the City of Canada Bay Council has challenged the scope of the plans.

“Council has reviewed the plans and raised a number of questions and clarifications which will be put to the consultants carrying out the remediation,” said the Manager of Environmental Health and Building, Nigel Bertus.

“Much of the detail on how the remediation work will be undertaken is unknown at this stage.”

The report proposes five different courses of remediation, identifying the removal, rectification and replacement of sediment as most feasible.

However, it fails to detail the extent of infrastructure, personnel and cost involved.

Residents maintain that tidal movements will only re-contaminate remediation sites if the rest of the bay is neglected.

Geosciences Professor Gavin Birch from Sydney University said these fears are legitimate.

“I don’t have first hand information but the area that has been agreed to presumably by the governing authorities as well as companies is a very small area in the shallow embankment in the inter-tidal zone,” he said.

“The vast majority of contamination [tends to] occur in deeper water in the bay itself and I don’t know that anyone’s done any extensive work on that to determine the spatial extent of the contamination.”

For more information, visit Elizabeth Pearson’s website.

Made Ferguson explores the proposed development of a hydroelectric dam in the Chilean Patagonia. The project will provide Chile with clean energy at a low economic cost, but 6000 hectares of pristine forest will be flooded, and a community will lose their way of life.