Moving water at Sydney Uni

In my second year unit in the Bachelor of Land and Water Science, I asked the students to run some on-line debates as part of their assessment. The small group of students worked on two debates: 1) whether land degradation was mainly due to climate variation or due to human impacts; and 2) Environmental flows are they really beneficial or just a placebo. In the debates they were split in a “for” and “against” team. The idea was to have them explore the scientific literature and dig out some of the controversial and contradictory statements. In addition, it would help them better understand the weaknesses in both sides of the argument. I hope this will help them in the future when they are employed as environmental professionals. I will try to summarise the main points of the second debate as I thought there were some interesting comments. Please note that this was set-up as a debate for assessment in a unit of study and the submissions of the students and views expressed in the debate are not necessarily the students’ views or my views.

In the semi-arid and very variable climate in Australia, water management for human use comes down very much on storing water for dry times. In the past, this has led to the building of large dams to store water for irrigation and drinking water use. Many of the current environmental problems in the Murray Darling Basin are a result of this dam building approach to storing water. Storing water in dams creates many environmental problems, which are all well documented: loss of downstream flow variability and biodiversity, high evaporation loss, eutrophication, thermal pollution and others.

I think I should start a campaign against bottled water. The picture in the SMH last week in relation to the aftermath of the riots in Thailand I think explains everything that is wrong with bottled water. Five people are resting and sitting around after the riots, but most striking are the stacks and stacks of plastic water bottles which are everywhere and these will probably all end up in the landfill. Clearly water was supplied to these people in these small individual bottles and all were just thrown on the ground after use. I know I commented on this last week as well, but I want to talk about it a bit more.

Interesting was the call by a columnist from Bloomberg news to look at water as the next employment opportunity for unemployed bankers. Given the money that Coca Cola is making from bottled water he is probably right.

Coca cola is allowed to extract water for free and sell it. I wonder if this is an example of “highest value use” of water. I can understand the criticism on such a decision, particularly given the low price ($200) Coca Cola is paying for the water and the profit the allegedly make from the water. In general, I don’t understand at all why people drink bottled water unless there is nothing else available.

It sometimes seems that every major public government decision that is made is criticised and the constant criticism sometimes leads to secrecy and avoidance. This suggests that criticism is a bad thing, can be damaging and should be avoided. Interestingly, a comment in the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend pointed out that not enough criticism has lead to the current credit crisis. Basically, the manager all set around selling each other wilder and wilder products with no one daring to criticise the ideas.