A report (click here to download a copy) just released by the Group of Eight (Go8) Australian universities concludes that we're going backwards with respect to numeracy.
There has been a frenzied rush to construct desalination plants in Australia. Not only have the business cases been questioned, and in some cases severely criticised, new doubts have been raised about the science underpinning components of the environmental studies.
The construction of very expensive and energy-hungry desalination plants is a growth industry in Australia. Concern has been mounting that approvals for some of these projects have been rushed through state governments. A recent report by Victorian Auditor-General Peter Frost questioned the credentials of the business case supporting new water initiaves. Dr. Frost's conclusion was equivocal: ''Whether these projects represent the best solution to achieve the government's policy objectives of saving water and securing Victoria's water remains unclear.'' While the business cases have received considerable attention, relatively less focus has been placed on the environmental studies that have been undertaken in support of these large infrastructure projects.
In a recent article published in the respected international journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, Prof. David Fox from the University of Melbourne examines the role of ecotoxicological tests in setting 'safe' dilutions for effluent discharges. He notes that despite long-standing problems with the scientific method used to determine these 'safe' dilutions "the methodology continues to be widely used throughout the world" and that "in Australia, the results from this highly statistical approach have underpinned the assessment of marine impacts from the many desalination plants that have been or are in the process of being built around the country."
Prof. Fox goes on to say "having pored over many of the ecotox reports for a number of these desalination plants, I suspect that a disturbingly high proportion of the recommended safe dilutions are of dubious value at best and fatally flawed at worst".
A link to the article appears with the companion News Item "Statistical Ecotoxicology" on the left of this page.
