Coastal town faces prospect of dead river with cause linked to climate change and coal mining

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A coastal town along the iconic Great Ocean Road is facing the prospect of a dead river. Once a fishing mecca, Anglesea’s river – and all the fish in it - are dying, and arguments are in full swing as to what's responsible: natural causes, climate change or the impacts of decades of coal mining.

Transcript

00:00This is a river in its death throes.

00:05The Anglesey River on the Great Ocean Road is almost completely devoid of marine life.

00:10It's not the first time it's happened.

00:12In 2019, after the last fish kill, the river was dead, effectively dead for three years.

00:19Local Keith Shipton has witnessed six fish kill events since 2000, with little evidence of any before then.

00:26It's very distressing, in fact, to see the fish die a slow lingering death.

00:31The main cause of these mass fish deaths is relatively simple.

00:34Naturally acidic soils, creating overly acidic water.

00:38The reason why they've started occurring regularly since 2000 is less clear.

00:43One key aspect is drying soils, allowing acids to oxidise and flow downstream.

00:49There's a whole range of factors that may lead to that drying process.

00:53So, things like the drying climate that we're observing, not only in southern Victoria, but globally of course.

01:01As well as factors like pumping of ground water.

01:05From 1969 to 2015, Anglesey was home to the Alcoa coal mine and power station.

01:11Some locals point to the mine's pumping of ground water as a cause of the drying soils.

01:16With the ground now sucking down water to refill the aquifer, rather than letting it flow into the river.

01:22At the moment, it's not contributing to the health of the ecosystem.

01:25In fact, it's subtracting from it.

01:27Alcoa, which has lodged a submission to renew groundwater pumping in Anglesey,

01:31argues its own testing has found its activities have had no adverse impacts on the river.

01:36With the root cause of Anglesey River's problems unclear, there appears to be no easy fix either.

01:42We're narrowing down those options to come towards the ones that are more feasible or more cost effective,

01:50but all of them will take a lot of time and there's really no certainty or no single option

01:56that can guarantee to fix those issues in the long term.

01:59Opening the river mouth into the sea is one solution being trialled.

02:03But for many locals, stopping an Alcoa application to renew groundwater pumping

02:08is a key step towards potentially saving the river.

02:11If we've got a situation where the river is doomed, we need to operate on that basis

02:19and see if we can at least help it.

02:24Once the lifeblood of Anglesey, this has become a river of uncertainty.

02:28And then there's the big question, just how long it will take for the river to recover this time around.

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