Moving water at Sydney Uni

Happy New Year to all of you! With the SOI stuck high in the +15 area, it might be a wet one! That could be an interesting hydrological year! In most cases the SOI has about a 3 - 6 month lag with the rainfall and streamflow signature, so maybe we are in for a wet autumn. Fingers crossed!

In the mean time I would like to get back to the story of long-wall mining and its impact on water resources. There are some interesting thoughts here, which are related to current world developments and water and the environment.

A while back (24th of November to be correct) there was a story in the Sydney Morning Herald about environmentalists being quite angry that Peabody Energy had received an environmental award for the repair job they had done on cracks in the Waratah Rivulet which flows into Woronora dam. I am with the environmentalists in this case and I will explain why.

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.