Answer this Question

BMQLD: Add as a Colleague
10/14/2011 3:43:14 AM EDT

Hello, I can not answer about the mine, but I lived aboard a yacht for 15 years. Is the river tidal? When the tide comes in, it takes contaminates with it. If the weather is rough, winds high, when the tide recedes, the contaminate is left high and dry on the river bank or mud flats. When the next storm comes along, these are added too and both are left on shore, or, if the storm is bigger, they are driven further inland 'if' the tide is also coming in. Our town has an inlet of water that goes out to sea. It is also fed from an inland creek. Inland is where the trees were cleared 5 kilometers away, and slash pine, (Radiata)were planted. Radiata turns the soil acidic. Rain washed that acidic soil into the creek, which went into the inlet. It killed the oyster lease, the sea grass, the Dugongs left, so did the swans. People blamed the shipyard at the inlet. Tests were done right at the shipyard, then out to deeper water and into the inlet, where the mouth of the creek was. The shipyard contaminates were very, very low. The heavy metals were dangerously high. One sample showed such heavy metal contamination that a new's broadcast was immediate, and so were announcements in the newspapers. More tests were done. The Radiata was changed to a different species of pine. The heavy metal? Well, the local rubbish dump, that had been there for decades was below the water table. It also was beside the creek. Decades of waste was leeching through the soil underground and into the creek, into the inlet and that is why, even though a shipyard downstream was seen as a contaminate culprit, the fault was actually upstream. If you have a problem, I would suggest that you speak to the elderly people in your area. Their memories are long. Their experience can help you to pin point when things started to change. Lastly, a new marina is planned for this town. When they dredged the inlet to make deep water access for deep keeled yachts they stirred up the heavy metals. They do not go away. This reminds me. A financial planner told me, back when I was 21, (I am now 50) that I should purchase any old Australian rubbish dump site that came up for sale because he said that in the future, when resources are scarce, or worth a fortune, people would pay dearly for that land too be able to dig up the buried lead, metals and glass to reuse. Wise man. Saw the value in recycling way back then. Byee

meganedwards84: Add as a Colleague
04/18/2011 9:24:58 PM EDT

I don't have a direct response to your question, but contamination on mine sites continues to be headline news - this article blames the miners themselves, but realistically are the government doing enough to help? http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/energy-resources-warned-not-to-cut-corners-at-rang