It’s worth checking out “Sydney’s Water …Going to Waste” on the Nature Conservation Council’s website (www.nccnsw.org.au) to get a really comprehensive history of the huge waste of water that’s happening on our doorstep.

Did you know that Manly is at the end of the longest sewage outfall in the world, it is 45 kilometres from where it starts at Blacktown, carrying the effluent of 1.2million people from the biggest sewage catchment in Sydney.

The effluent passes through the North Head Sewage Treatment Plant, which has the worst treatment of the three major Sydney outfalls.  The annual EPA licence to pollute the ocean permits 5,910,020 kg of oil and grease and 35,010,800 kg of solids to be discharged  onto the reef in our backyard off North Head.  This licence was granted in 1993 and there will be no change to it until 2023.

Every day approx. 1 billion litres of effluent are dumped in the sea from Malabar, Bondi and North Head Sewage Treatment Plants.  The technology exists for treatment to drinking water standard if necessary and this is done all over the world.  Check out for yourself the simple book which the National Water Commission has printed “From Waste-d-water to Pure Water” by Jenifer Simpson.  Jenifer was the winner of the 2008 International Water Association’s Communication and Marketing Award for “Best Popular Presentation of Water Science.”  Check it out at www.nwc.gov.au.

Recycling and re-use of wastewater is done all over the world, from plants of comparable scale to North Head.  Take Florida, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection commissioned the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences to carry out an Ocean Outfall Study in 2006.  As a result, legislation was signed into law on 2008 requiring South Florida Water Management to include water supply development projects that promoted the elimination of ocean outfalls in its regional water supply projects.  It also prohibits the construction of new expanded discharges, or new outfalls.  A functioning re-use system which provides for a minimum of 60% recycling by 2025 is essential.

Meanwhile, Sydney Water’s target for 2015 is to recycle only 12%. And yet, legislation to encourage recycling and reuse was enshrined in the current Sydney Water Act 1994 with the long-term goal that no dry weather flows go to the ocean.  Elimination of dry weather flows to the ocean in Sydney will not occur unless it is enshrined in legislation requiring it by a certain date as in Florida.  This would encourage decentralisation and devoluming of the outfalls by major offtakes upstream to require reuse and recycling. Years ago, Councils in Sydney’s  western suburbs indicated to Manly Council that they would like to treat and reuse the effluent for use on their playing fields. They could even use the return pipe in the Northside Storage Tunnel. That is if the $3.7million pipe which has never been used is repaired!

350 Event: Northern Beaches Climate Action Groups Star at International Event

This International Day saw 5200 events in 180 countries spell out their concern for politicians to take to the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.

This was the first event for public participation organised by the Pittwater and Manly Warringah Climate Action Groups and aerial photos taken by helicopter found their way on to Channel 7,2, 9 and 10 TV news.

Manly General Manager Henry Wong and local member, Mike Baird shared their desire with the crowd to see real action on climate change.

The success of the event is thanks to North Steyne Surf Club, Surfrider Northern Beaches, Manly Volleyball and Clean Energy for Eternity to name just a few.   As well they contributed to speeches on the day but high school students Ellie Griffin and Ellis Cooper stole the show with their stirring words.

Hundreds of people signed the 350 banner to be presented in Canberra while a huge sphere assembled by the crowd under the guidance of sculptor Sophie Hoppe carried a 350 flag and artist  Natalie Coulter’s melting planet attracted plenty of keen photographers.

A special screening of the recently released documentary "The Burning Season" will be held at the Cremorne Orpheum on Thursday 27th August between 6.00 to 9.00pm.

This film was given a score of 4 by both Margaret and David on their ABC show "At the Movies" and was a popular film at the recent Sydney Film Festival.

The documentary follows the travels of Dorjee Sun, a young Australian man who believes there is money to be made from protecting rain forests in Indonesia, surviving the organgutan from extinction and making a real impact on climate change.  It has been described as an "eco thriller about a young man not afraid to confront the biggest challenge of our time ...and inspiring as Inconvenient Truth was frightening".

I have personally seen the devastation of massive areas of the gorilla's habitat but it has to be seen to be believed.  Hear all about the plight of these incredible creatures from members of the Borneo Orangutan Society who will give a short presentation during the evening.

The evening is being organised by the Mosman Climate Challenge Group and admission is by prepaid ticket only, available from Dana 99606514, Margie 99693078 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  Tickets are $25.00 per person, including cocktail food.

Next Wednesday’s talk at the Tramshed Community Centre, Narrabeen will give Northern Beaches residents a great opportunity to hear where we are up to in the on climate change from a great group of experts who are all inspirational speakers. 

Mark Diesendorf is the Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales and has held many other key positions.  He is also President of the Australia New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics and active membership of several other NGOs devoted to environment, health, renewable energy, appropriate technology and peace.  He is author of Greenhouse solutions with Sustainable Energy to which his latest book “Climate Action – A Campaign Manual for Greenhouse Solutions” is the sequal.

Can we beat climate change?  Mark thinks we must and can and lays out what individuals and groups of activists can do, often in the face of resistance from those who try to deny the urgency and efend the status quo’.  Distilling his knowledge and experience, Mark cogently presents practical steps to engaging effectively with climate change politics.

Mark argues that ecologically sustainable energy technologies based on energy efficiency, renewable energy and natural gas are commercially available today and that their implementation could halve Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions within just a few decades.  He says the main barriers to progress are neither technical nor economic but rather are our social institutions and the political power of the big greenhouse gas emitting industries, coal, oil, aluminium, cement and motor vehicles.  I read something recently which put that really succinctly “expecting scientists to beat the coal lobby in Canberra is like sending two men in a tinny to disarm North Korea!”

For an update from our NGO’s check out the Nature Conservation Council’s website (www.nccnsw.org.au) and read “Plan B, An Agenda for Immediate Climate Action”.  Cate Faehrman, Executive Director of NCC will give everyone a campaign update from the National Climate Emergency Rally on 13th June and where to now.

No-one living on the Northern Beaches this week and witnessing our disappearing beaches, could fail to be concerned about climate change and our children’s future.

Paul Gilding, former CEO of Greenpeace International and now working for  Prince Charles, gave an inspirational address at Sydney University recently.  I have just quoted snippets so that you too can be inspired.  He was asking do we really think that we can have 3%, 4%, 5% growth exponentially indefinitely before something go wrong.  We have an economy which has now operated at about 1.2 Earths which is providing us with food, with clothing and with a whole range of ecosystem services and all the analysis of that says that we’re about 120% of sustainable provision from that system.  This means that we are undermining the source of our food, our agriculture and our water supplies.

This is a giant global Ponzi scheme.  We are paying out our capital as dividends, while we are saying to our children…Thank you for your investment.  We’re going to take it now and leave you the poorer.

Investors’ money being used to give the delusion of growth, delusion of success and they collapse.  That’s what’s going to happen to us if we keep on going
All the evidence in history is we don’t evolve until we have the crash….we don’t respond until we have a crisis and we soon have the global financial crisis and a whole range of different other examples.  We  respond when the crisis hits, so the very important issue is when the crisis hits.  New York Times’ Tom Friedman referred to this moment recently as “When Mother Nature and Father Greed hit the wall at once’

Last July we entered the crash, food prices were going through the roof because climate change was crashing the Australian wheat crop and rice crop. Oil prices were going through the roof because consumption in China was going ahead of forecast.  We had the biggest ever melting of the North Pole sea ice, we lost an area four times the size of Victoria in one year and the scientists; response was “Well that wasn’t supposed to happen”, they had no explanation it just happened.  Two million square kilometres suddenly disappeared one summer.

The crisis that’s coming is going to trigger the biggest transformation in civilisation’s history.  This is going to be fast and furious and incredibly exciting.  It’s going to happen in an economy near you and we are going to look back and say “that wasn’t so hard.  Why didn’t we start it earlier…that really was quite simple”  During World War II, in the USA, they went from 1.4% of GDP being spent on the military in 1939 to 37% by 1945.   This is not a percentage of government spending, this is a percentage of GDP focused on the war effort.  Just in the four years after Pearl Harbour they had a tenfold increase inflation adjusted in the amount spent on the military on security issues.  They transformed the auto industry to producing guns and cars and tanks for the war effort right to be an armaments manufacturer.  In Nine months.  So spectacular transformations can occur when we decide to act and we are absolutely capable of it.  The challenge we have is we’ve going to have to do it that fast and then we’re going to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere to turn it around again.

Not only do we know how to fix this issue technically, we know how to fix it socially.  We know deep in our hearts that buying stuff doesn’t make you happy.  What makes us happy is love, relationships, community and doing something meaningful with your life.  The good news is that we know how to fix it, we know what the values are, we know how to change and we’re already doing it.  There are movements emerging all around the world of people acting, a transition towns movements, in the UK and the US, building towns and cities that aren’t going to rely on an oil-intensive CO2  intensive economy.  They’re looking for solutions, they’re building those communities now and they know what the way forward looks like.

My favourite quote is one which I read in an article about a bunch of Harvard students who were inventing a new way forward in transport “We are the people we’ve been waiting for.  There is no-one else coming.  There is nowhere else for them to come from.  There is no-one better than this, we are the people and therefore it’s time for us to get to work on the task of building a new world”.

It' a nice irony that under the gaze of the founder of our nation and our first prime minister at Federation Point, a tiny colony of "fairy" penguins nests.

Watched over nightly by dedicated volunteer penguin wardens here and at Manly Wharf, these "little Aussie battlers" struggle to survive against the odds of dogs, drunks and snap happy tourists.

It's the "odds" that are the worry, as on numerous occasions in Manly, one dog has wiped out 8 penguins at a time.  Although these birds "fly" in the water, they are deathly slow on land.  It's hard to understand the pride of local dog owners who say "I've never been fined" and behave as though its their right to run their dog off the lead where video surveillance cameras and signs alike make it clear it is a fineable offence.

Meanwhile, commuters hurrying home from busy Manly Wharf, happily pause to check out their penguins each night and express their thanks to the wardens as they pass.  Their long night vigils start in the cold winter months of June-July and persist (or exist)  through the peak crowds of hundreds at Christmas time and even more at the fireworks on New Year's eve.  By contrast, if you are strolling along the Scenic Walkway in the peace of the evening under the trees, it is such a delight to come upon a knot of adoring tourists at the foot of the Federation Point stairs.  They stand there quietly, in wonder that there is just a fence between them and young penguins waiting for their parent to come home and feed them.

Manly, as Australia's oldest tourist resort and home to the only breeding colony of little penguins on the mainland of NSW, has a unique opportunity to nurture these creatures that have become the icon of every conceivable commercial entity from telephone to transport companies.

Compare Boulders Bay in South Africa, where once there were just a few penguins and now there is a thriving Sanctuary where you often swim with penguins.   My favourite photo is one where a tourist is chatting on his mobile seemingly unaware of the penguin sunning himself nearby on the sand.  Here, the local Chamber of Commerce has been running a Penguin Festival for years and restaurants are named Penguin Point, etc.    It has brought many financial advantages to the town but there is no intrusive exploitation of the penguins with searchlights and grandstands, just a community pride that the penguins have chosen their town!

Just think, you could say Manly's penguins are international movie stars already! They were the stars of  National Geographic's  45 minute  video "Fairy Penguins, the Secret of Sydney Harbour".

Way back in 1995, Tim Flannery addressed a packed public meeting in Manly about the need to protect the unique and fragile environment of North Head.  Shortly afterwards, he wrote to Manly’s Mayor recommending that every effort should be made to make North Head a sanctuary.

North Head has the last two ancient sand dunes in Sydney Harbour and unusual “hanging swamps”.  They in turn are covered by the largest area of the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub Endangered Ecological Community..  In turn this shelters Sydney Harbour’s last colony of Longnosed Bandicoots, another endangered population.

Seven years down the track at the Sanctuary Conference at the old Artillery School on North Head, the North Head Sanctuary Foundation was formed in 2002.

This month, the Sanctuary Foundation is starting a native plant nursery for propagation of species native to North Head  and you can visit any weekend and learn all about this unique environment.  Visit the Education Room of the Car-rang-gel Plant Nursery, staffed by volunteers who can advise you on great walks through the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub.

Catch the 135 bus from Manly to the Sanctuary on North Head Scenic Drive and are having a look at the Gatehouse Visitors Centre, walk along past the old parade ground towards North Fort and follow the sign to the Nursery.

International activist  Bill McKibben is here to inspire Australians to continue their record of being active on climate change. His best-selling book “The End of Nature and Deep Economy:  the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future” written in 1989 is widely regarded as the first book about climate change for a general audience. 

Now McKibben looks to the evidence of vast Arctic sea melts that have forced usually conservative scientists to drastically re-evaluate their predictions.  Where once scientists predicted that the summer ice of the Arctic could be gone by 2070, one NASA scientist recently estimated that the summer Arctic might be ice-free by 2012.

According to him, the most recent science says that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to earth. He maintains that tipping point is not an idle buzzword …it means that the physical world is taking over the process that humans began.

“The End of Nature” was published after being serialised in the New Yorker.  He has since written many books including 2007’s “Deep Economy:  the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future”.  In it he outlines how many local economies are challenging globalisation and addresses what the author sees as shortcomings of the growth economy.

McKibben was most recently involved in leading the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history with the Step It Up 2007 campaign and is now travelling the world for the 350.org movement. 

Go to www.350.org to read about the hundreds of creative events registered for 24th October all over the world.  Read up on “Action Spotlight …350 Down Under” to see what’s planned locally.

Last night’s news about the plight of the rock lobster fishery in  Western Australia sounded the latest warning about depleted ocean resources.  A report from the BBC last year quoted the work of an international team of researchers which stated  that on a world basis there will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue.  Another researcher from Canada warned “that the way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be another species to exploit after we’ve completely gone through the last one.  What we’re highlighting is there is a finite number of stocks; we have gone through one-third and we are going to get through the rest.”

Check out these ocean facts, a good reason to eat “sustainable seafood”

• Earth is 75% ocean
• Oceans are a primary food source for half of the world’s population, 3.5billion people (which could double in twenty years)
• More than 50% of seafood is fed to land animals
• 90% of the predatory fish have been caught
• Many species are slow growing and long-lived (>20 years)
• Bottom trawlers destroy an area of the ocean twice the size of the USA every year and dump 7 million tonnes of bycatch per year, including fish, albatross, dolphins
• More than 70% of fishing zones are exploited beyond their capacity of renewal
• 50% of the world’s coral reefs have disappeared
• More than 150 dead zones have developed
• Acid in the ocean created from excess CO2 threatens sea creatures dependent on calcium

Choosing sustainable seafood is easy with the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s free pocket guide available from the Manly Environment Centre or Become a Sea Guardian and sign up with AMCS on www.amcs.org.au or Freecall:  1800 066299.

Last month, at the end of the International Year of the Reef, I was shocked to learn that poisonous ‘bio-accumulating’ pesticides which can move up the food chain are collecting in Great Barrier Reef seagrass beds where sea turtles feed.  At the conference convened by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, it was announced that these pesticides which are used in agriculture systems, combined with mud flows and nutrients from fertilizers have become the greatest threat to the Reef’s future after climate change.  Can you imagine 14 million tonnes of these draining from the land into the Reef?

Over 90% of the pollution affecting the Reef is from out of date agricultural practices and as a result around 700 coral reefs are at risk.   The Reef needs a 50 per cent reduction in pollution impacts by 2013.  The Reef also needs a comprehensive plan that brings together the science and the management and a network of “catchment cops” to work with industry to ensure compliance with urgently needed pollution laws.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) has had a proud record of  protecting the Great Barrier Reef since 1965.  They have surveyed its wildlife and ecosystems and fought in the courts to prove that it is worth protecting. Today they are also battling to stop shark fishing in the Reef’s World Heritage waters because to Australia’s shame, our sharks are still killed to service the international trade in shark fins. AMCS needs our financial support to get the sharks, dugongs and turtles out of fishing nets and to run a campaign to stop pollution from hurting our Reef.

We cannot risk the Great Barrier Reef going the way of the Carribean reefs, and losing an annual $5.4 billion in tourism and 50,000 jobs.  Ring AMCS on 1800066299.

Every year, the Manly Environment Centre pays tribute to a local champion of conserving Manly’s amazing environment. The prize is an original painting by artist, environmentalist and social commentator, Marty Cullen.

The first MEC Eco Award was presented to Peter Garrett in 2006 at the MEC’s 15th birthday celebration.  He was honoured for his long-standing support of Manly’s unique and fragile environment and the MEC in particular.

In 2007, the chief guardian of Manly’s penguin colony, Angelika Treichler received the second Eco Award. For years, Angelika, with a band of volunteer Penguin Wardens has worked far into the night protecting nesting penguins from dogs, drunks and snaphappy tourists.

In 2008, Joanna Griggs presented the third Eco Award to sustainable living pioneer, Keelah Lam.  Her award, a painting by Marty Cullen entitled “Vision”, pays tribute to her dedication: “Visionary leadership is a rare commodity in our 21st Century world which is, for the most part, preoccupied with the polarisation of wealth and power from the many to the few” reads Cullen’s inscription.  “Since 1991, the Manly Environment Centre has followed the road less travelled and by 2008, it is becoming more and more evident how vital visionary leadership is in our time”.

Nominate your unsung hero, an ordinary person doing extraordinary things for the MEC’s 2009 Eco Award! Applications close on Sunday, 15th February.  For more information, drop into the MEC at 41 Belgrave Street, ring 99762842 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Reading Saturday's editorial about Clean Up Australia's starting in 1989 got me thinking about Manly's outstanding record of a generation of local community action in the environment.

Remember the POOO (PEOPLE OPPOSED TO OCEAN OUTFALLS)March which started in Manly in 1985 protesting about sewage pollution on our beaches from the North Head Sewage Treatment Plant.  It was so bad that the lifesavers and people who were in the surf a lot were lining up for Hepatitus shots.  In 1989 the POOO marches culminated in the Turn the Tide concert with Midnight Oil  at Bondi which attracted 200,000 people.  The result saw the start of  Water Board's Environmental Levy which raised hundreds of millions of dollars  and the Water Board's Clean Waterways program.

The same year, two young schoolteachers, Sue and Col Lennox who were teaching Science at Freshwater High School, started what was to become the high profile Water Board's Streamwatch water quality monitoring program.  Sue and Col and their students  had been shocked at the amount of sewage  in our local creeks and lagoons and started to monitor the water quality in their science lessons. Their results showed faecal results well above the allowed levels and proved conclusively that it was caused by old and leaky infrastructure. Local residents had formed a Manly Lagoon committee twenty years before that and had complained to everyone about the pollution without any action being taken but once the students had the proof, the Water Board started a huge program to address the large number of sewage overflows and leaks in our local lagoons -- it turned out there were 29 designed overflows in Manly Lagoon alone.

Does anyone know who published the little book in Manly for school children on pollution in the seventies?

Also in 1989, Manly's Carole Douglas and other local residents started the Manly Warringah Eco Group which gave talks about what people could do at home to conserve the environment.

The Friends of North Head started twenty-five years ago to ensure that the Commonwealth handed back the Quarantine Station to National Parks.  This ideas of this foreward thinking Manly group were to be taken up by Manly Council and the community  years later, the Cabbage Tree Bay Marine Sanctuary is just one of them.   Visiting the North Head Sanctuary Plant Nursery this weekend I was reminded that the concept of one integrated Plan of Management for North Head was the idea of the Friends of North Head.

As I recall, 1989 saw Manly Vale Primary School a pioneer in environmental education,  become NSW first school of environmental excellence. 

Sign the Pledge to Go Fur Free

China supplies more than half of the finished fur garments imported for sale in the United States. Consumers everywhere need to know the truth about fur.

Undercover investigators from Swiss animal Protection International recently toured fur farms in China’s Hebel Province, and it quickly became clear why outsiders are banned from visiting.  There are no regulations governing fur farms in China ---farmers can house and slaughter animals however they see fit –meaning miserable lives and excruciating deaths.  The investigators found horrors beyond their worst imaginings and concluded “Conditions on Chinese farms make a mockery of the most elementary animal welfare standards.  In their lives and in their unspeakable deaths, these animals have been denied even the simplest acts of kindness”.

When people learn that millions of innocent animals are beaten, boiled, hanged and electrocuted for their fur every year – when they learn that every fur coat, lining, trim or fur cat toy represents the intense suffering of several dozen animals?  And when they learn that furriers internationally mislabel fur as not taken from dogs and cats or as fake …then every decent human being will want to go FUR-FREE.

Simply go to http://www.peta.org/feat/ChineseFur/ and sign

I, the undersigned, hereby pledge to go FUR-FREE.  I say “NO” to the cruel and barbaric slaughter of millions of animals around the world for their skin, I say “NO” to fur coats, collars, trim, trinkets, cat toys, and other products made from the fur of animals as well as any other attempt to sneak fur into everyday items.  I pledge to expose the truth about fur and to spread the word until  we close down the international fur trade forever.

If you dare watch the video, but I have to warn you, it’s horrific.