Through The Sandglass

Can we please not blow up coral reefs?

BEFORE: A Pinnate batfish swimming among other fish in Tatawa Besar in the waters of Komodo islands, Indonesia. AFTER: damaged coral reefs in the water of Tatawa Besar, Komodo islands, Indonesia. [Robert Delfs/Michael W. Ishak]

I admire corals – not only for their beauty, diversity, and the communities they harbour, but also for their fortitude. Notwithstanding our (justified) concern over the future of coral reefs today, they are extremely ancient critters and have survived for hundreds of millions of years through thick and thin. And when you consider the number of mass extinctions that have occurred in our planet’s turbulent history, those are extreme thicks and very thins.

Let’s face it, corals represent yet another example of things about which what we do know is but a fraction of what we don’t – see, for example, recent revelations on their survival skills. It’s only a few months since I had the pleasure of visiting parts of eastern Indonesia and, amongst the many memories, snorkelling around the glorious coral reefs of the Komodo Islands ranks right up there:

 
So, you can perhaps imagine my horror when recently, in the Jakarta Globe, courtesy of Associated Press, I saw the image at the head of this post and read the following story:

Fishermen Blast Premier Dive Sites Off Indonesia
Jacob Herin | April 20, 2012

Komodo Island, Indonesia. Coral gardens that were among Asia’s most spectacular, teeming with colorful sea life just a few months ago, have been transformed into desolate gray moonscapes by fishermen who use explosives or cyanide to kill or stun their prey. Dive operators and conservationists say the government is not doing enough to protect waters off the Komodo Islands in eastern Indonesia. They say enforcement declined greatly following the exit of a US-based conservation group that helped fight destructive fishing practices. Local officials disagree, pointing to dozens of arrests and several deadly gunbattles with suspects.

Michael Ishak, a scuba instructor and professional underwater photographer who has made hundreds of trips to the area, said he’s seen more illegal fishermen than ever this year. The pictures, he said, speak for themselves.
When Ishak returned last month to one of his favorite spots, Tatawa Besar, known for its colorful clouds of damselfish, basslets and hawksbill sea turtles, he found that a 200-square-meter reef had been obliterated. “At first I thought, ‘This can’t be right. I must have jumped in the wrong place,’” he said, adding he swam back and forth to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake. “But it was true. All the hard coral had just been blasted, ripped off, turned upside down. Some of it was still alive. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The site is among several to have been hit inside Komodo National Park, a 500,000-acre reserve and U.N. World Heritage Site that spans several dusty, tan-colored volcanic islands and is most famous for its Komodo dragons — the world’s largest lizards. Its remote and hard-to-reach waters, bursting with fluorescent reds and yellows, contain staggering levels of diversity, from iridescent corals and octopuses with lime-green banded eyes to black-and-blue sea snakes.
They are supposed to be protected, but fishermen are drawn there by locally popular fish like fusiliers and high-value export species like groupers and snappers. Fishermen can be seen in small wooden boats, some using traditional nets or lines. Others have been captured on video blasting sites with “bombs” — fertilizer and kerosene mixed in beer bottles. Breathing through tubes connected to air compressors at the surface, young men plunge to the bottom and use squeeze bottles to squirt cyanide into the coral to stun and capture fish. Dive operators are increasingly seeing dead fish on the sea floor or floating on the surface.

“The biggest problem is that fishermen seem to be free to come into Komodo, completely ignoring the zoning and resource use regulations,” said Jos Pet, a fisheries scientist who has worked with numerous marine conservation groups in the area in recent years. He said they are “quite simply fishing empty this World Heritage Site.”

Sustyo Iriyono, the head of the park, said problems are being exaggerated and denied claims of lax enforcement. “It’s only part of the black campaigns against us by those who are hurt by our rules and orders,” he said without elaborating. He said rangers have arrested more than 60 fishermen over the past two years, including a group of young men captured last month after they were seen bombing waters off Banda island in the western part of the park. One of the suspects was shot and killed after the fishermen tried to escape by throwing fish bombs at the rangers, Iriyono said. Three others, including a 13-year-old, were slightly injured.

“You see?” said Iriyono. “No one can say I’m not acting firmly against those who are destroying the dive spots!”
He added that the park is one of the few places where fish bombing is monitored with any regularity in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian nation of more than 17,000 islands.

Divers, however, say enforcement has dropped dramatically since 2010, when the government reclaimed sole control of operations. For two decades before that, The Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based nonprofit, had helped the government confront destructive fishing practices there. “No-take zones” were created, protecting spawning areas, and coastal areas also were put off limits. Patrols using park rangers, navy personnel and local police were key to enforcement.
In 2005, the government gave a 30-year permit to Putri Naga Komodo, a nonprofit joint venture company partially funded by The Nature Conservancy and the World Bank to operate tourist facilities in hopes of eventually making the park financially self-sustaining. Entrance and conservation fees — just a few dollars at the time — went up several tenfold for foreign tourists. With around 30,000 local and international visitors annually at the time, that would have given the park a budget of well over $1 million, but outraged government officials demanded that the funds go directly into the state budget. The deal collapsed in 2010, when Putri Naga Komodo’s permit was yanked. “They had no right to directly collect the entrance fees from the tourists,” said Novianto Bambang, a Forestry Ministry official.

Dive operators and underwater photographers have asked The Nature Conservancy and similar organizations like WWF Indonesia, to return to Komodo and help with conservation efforts there. Nature Conservancy representative Arwandridja Rukma did not address that possibility, saying only that the organization operates in Indonesia upon the invitation of the government.

Yes, this is horrifying: blowing up coral reefs or injecting them with cyanide is utter lunacy. But, as always, it’s not a simple issue. Unregulated and chaotic fishing have depleted natural stocks, and, regardless of what proportion of explosive mayhem is perpetrated by outsiders as opposed to locals, the fact is that the inhabitants of the Komodo islands, if not actually poverty-stricken, live very lean lives. These are some of our photos from the town of Komodo, the largest concentration of the population. These people have to live, and fishing is their main – virtually only – means of doing so. These kids deserve food, an education, a life.

After I read this piece, by yet another twist of serendipity, I received an email from Richard Bready. Richard is a frequent commenter on this blog, always adding a fascinating, and often provocative, dimension to the posts - and he is, so far, my only guest poet. It seems that, from the post on the European sand belt, he had been following a trail of links on the subject of geoconservation, and come across the site of Ashoka Changemakers – whose purpose is to create “opportunities for organizations, corporations, and individuals to drive meaningful and measurable social change.” They are supported by, amongst others, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Never having come across this initiative, I followed up, specifically, as Richard directed me, on their coastal program, and their “Geotourism Challenge 2010: Places on the Edge - Saving Coastal and Freshwater Destinations.” Now this competition has been supported by the National Geographic, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the latter’s Multilateral Investment Fund, and there is an understandable focus on Central America. But what fascinated me – and is of great relevance to the topic of this post – were two of the three winning initiatives:

1. Coral Gardens - Living Reefs

Reefs provide food and income for coastal communities and are a foundation of tourism, producing white sandy beaches and protecting shorelines. My idea has been to actively involve communities and the tourism industry in planting and caring for corals, with the dive industry trained to care for dive sites, and with resorts taking on trained "coral gardeners". Guests can also become involved and learn about reefs while they help plant corals and garden the reefs, giving something back to the destination and to the planet.

Go to the full description to read the details – this arises directly from the passion of an individual.

Then, there was this winner – deeply relevant to Komodo, and again the idea of an innovative individual:

2. Development of economic partnerships between artisanal fisher folk and tourism operators

Project will create economic partnerships/opportunities between artisanal fisher folk and the tourism sector by constructing a locally-supported fisheries co-op for certified, sustainably caught products and direct marketing strategy with local hotels/restaurants. Project will construct a marine research center that contributes to responsible tourism development/heritage protection by promoting local SMEs.

It struck me that these projects address exactly the issues that the reefs and the inhabitants of the Komodo Islands are facing – and that support for them by Ashoka Changemakers is admirable. The concept of translating these ideas into an Indonesian context is, as the article above so depressingly shows, a huge challenge. But Komodo is a National Park, and has been a World Heritage Site since 1991. If anywhere fits the definition of an “ecotourism destination,” and a prime candidate for geoconservation and biodiversity preservation, Komodo is it. But people live there and must be active participants in - and beneficiaries of - any progress. It may be difficult, but we can’t accept that it’s impossible, and surely somewhere there are people with the vision, the passion, and the expertise to make something like the initiatives described above actually work in Komodo. Please.

 

Today's Mad Hatters - the toxic price of gold

 
The Mad Hatter was mad as a result of poisoning from the mercury used in curing felt. Today’s artisanal gold miners are poisoned by the mercury used to extract the precious metal. Perhaps 15% of gold production today still comes from the small-scale activities of more than 50 million people in seventy countries around the world (see http://www.artisanalgold.org/home). And one of those countries is Indonesia, where, as is commonly the case, the gold is mainly extracted from placer sands and gravels by the age-old process of panning. Gold panning may be back-breaking work, but the real health hazard comes with the mercury used to further purify the product: mercury attracts the gold, forming an amalgam, and the mercury is then burnt off to leave the gold behind: 

 
There are relatively simple and effective devices that can prevent the mercury vapour escaping into the air – and the bodies of the miners and all around them – but they remain the exception rather than the rule. I had not appreciated the extent of this problem and was recently horrified to read (and see the images from) the following piece in the Jakarta Globe:  

Indonesia's Poisonous River of Gold: The Mercury Dilemma
March 29, 2012

Esrum has always gone to the river near his house when he needs something for his family.
“Our ancestors always had two things to sustain them: the jungle and the river. The jungle provided us with our basic needs and the river with gold, so we could buy what we could not get from the jungle,” Esrum said.
For decades, villagers in Tumbang Anoi in Central Kalimantan have panned for gold in the Kahayan River, and for generations the system worked well. But at the end of the 20th century, a relatively cheap and efficient way of extracting gold was introduced that used mercury.
A deadly combination

Mercury binds particles of gold together, forming an amalgam of metals that miners are then able to burn to remove the extraneous mercury. The process works well, but what Esrum and his fellow small-scale miners did not know was that this deadly toxin can enter the air, water and ground, poisoning the fish they eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe.
Even in small quantities, mercury can cause severe health problems like miscarriages, brain damage, tremors, kidney, skin and eye problems and even death. These symptoms can appear quickly, or over a long period of time. Mercury is especially dangerous to young children and pregnant mothers, who can pass on the poison to the unborn child.
As background levels increase in the environment, more people, even outside of the mining community, are threatened.
The worst recorded case of mercury contamination was in Minamata, Japan, where thousands of people were poisoned by methylmercury as a result of eating fish. The mercury was released in the industrial wastewater of a Chisso Corporation chemical factory, taking place over decades from 1932 to 1968.
The mercury accumulated in sea life in Minamata Bay and the Shiranui Sea, and while human, cat, dog and pig deaths continued for some 30 years, the government and company did little to prevent the pollution. As of March 2001, 2,265 victims had been officially recognized — 1,784 of the victims have died ­— while more than 10,000 other related parties have received financial compensation from Chisso.
By 2004, Chisso had paid $86 million, and was also ordered to clean up the contamination. In 2010, a settlement was reached to compensate as-yet unverified victims.
“We want to prevent the Minamata incident from appearing here in Indonesia,” said Sumali Agrawal, head of the Mercury Project, part of a nonprofit foundation based in Central Kalimantan.
“But mercury contamination is already widespread in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, as well as other islands, including Java. Small-scale gold mining is by far the greatest cause of mercury emissions in Indonesia. Even in Bogor, near Jakarta, 17,000 kilograms of mercury are emitted by gold processors every year. In Central Kalimantan, over 50,000 kilograms are emitted into the environment each year in one location alone.”
The Mercury Project was implemented by Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta, a nonprofit foundation set up by Kalimantan Gold Corporation, a minerals exploration venture that supports sustainable mining practices. Its mercury remediation program receives support from the Blacksmith Institute, the United Nations Environmental Program and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

A way out
The foundation works with local miners and introduces recycling technology that reduces mercury emissions by up to 95 percent. But it’s not just the miners who need to understand the dangers of using mercury; the entire community must be made aware of the risks in order for real change to occur.
“I really didn’t understand how mercury could hurt my family,” said Nyai, who lives in the mining area. “My kids even played with it. We would burn the amalgam in the open. I never thought breathing the smoke could harm us.”
Getting mercury recycling equipment to gold miners and processors is just one way to help reduce the impact of mercury on the environment. Each of the cheap and simple retort devices supplied by YTS recovers mercury directly and immediately reduces the quantity that escapes into the environment.
In January 2007, YTS created a water-box condenser as a low-cost solution to prevent pollution from gold shops as part of efforts from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the Global Mercury Project. UNIDO provided these mercury recovery systems to 36 gold shops in a village in Katingan district. Their mercury-pollution program has since been extended with funding from the Blacksmith Institute, and now covers six districts in Central Kalimantan.
The water-box condenser traps mercury fumes inside a plastic box filled with water. Equipment distributed last year directly prevented 3,400 kilograms of mercury from being released into the air.
YTS is also working to introduce mercury-free methods such as gravity separation and direct smelting with borax. This method has been used successfully in the Philippines for decades but has not yet been implemented in other areas.
A 1967 law on mining practices prohibits small-scale mining except in designated community mining areas. However, the rising price of gold, decentralization, lack of natural resource management and unclear regulations have contributed to the rapid spread of mining with mercury across Indonesia over the last 15 years.
There is also a lack of alternative employment for many of the people in these new gold mining communities. In 2006, 570 mining hot spots were identified that involved 50,000 miners and 300,000 ancillary people who depended on small scale mining activities.
By 2010, more than 800 hot spots were found throughout the archipelago.

A global issue
Nearly a third of the world’s gold production comes from more than 15 million small scale miners, including one million child laborers. The mercury problem affects many developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. In many countries, small-scale mining is an important driver of economic development, but one that brings unacceptable health and environmental consequences.
Experts from MercuryWatch estimate that small-scale mining releases at least 1,400 tons of mercury into the environment every year. For every kilogram of gold mined, at least three kilograms of mercury are released into the ecosystem.
The international effort to ban mercury has caused a sharp rise in the price, which is having a beneficial impact, limiting some of the worst practices such as pouring mercury into rock-crushers.
Indonesia is one of 140 countries that has agreed to outlaw the use and production of mercury by entering into a legally binding international treaty on the toxic liquid metal.
“Now, more than ever before, it is vital that artisanal miners are empowered to change their practices in order to prevent further mercury contamination of our environment,” Sumali said. “This will require a coordinated effort from all stakeholders in this sector, working hand in hand with the government and the global community.”
Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta
Jl. Badak VII No.2, Bukit Tunggal
Palangka Raya
Central Kalimantan
tambuhaksinta@gmail.com
www.tambuhaksinta.com

So, our desire for bright, shiny, precious stuff provides a livelihood for tens of millions of people around the world – but, at the same time, poisons them. Nevertheless, there are solutions and these are being actively addressed by organisations on all scales, from the local YTS in Kalimantan, to the UN Development Programme. May they be successful. Let’s hope that toxicity can be eliminated, and, just as “blood diamonds” became part of our terminology, “dementia gold” becomes part of our consumer awareness.

 

[Images from the Artisanal Gold Council, the Jakarta Globe, and the Jakarta Post. For further excellent resources, see, for example, http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/blog/?p=121, http://bario-neal.com/bn/blog/?p=1197, http://www.epa.gov/international/toxics/mercury/asgm.html, and http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28596948/ns/world_news-world_environment/t/mercury-gold-mining-poses-toxic-threat/]

Oh, and wasn’t I self-disciplined in making no commentary on the Tea Party?

Some folk who ARE planning for rising sea levels

 
Kiribati. OK, I knew the name, but I had to check the map, too. A group of atolls straddling the equator over an area of 3.5 million square kilometres that host a population of 113,000 people; south of the Marshall Islands, North of Tuvalu and Fiji:

 
But those 113,000 people have a government that thinks ahead – and thinks on their behalf. Continuing my thematic rant, accompanied by the sounds of thundering timpani (think crashing storm surge waves), I invite you to compare the policies of the Government of the Republic of Kiribati with the posturing and lobbying of the vested interests elsewhere in the world (I couldn’t possibly comment more specifically). The thing is that the Kiribati authorities recognise that sea levels are rising and that their entire nation is made up of low-lying land which is already being battered and reduced by tides and storms.

Here, in a recent report from the UK’s Daily Telegraph, is what they are planning:

Entire nation of Kiribati to be relocated over rising sea level threat

The low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so it can relocate islanders under threat from rising sea levels.

By Paul Chapman, Wellington

In what could be the world's first climate-induced migration of modern times, Anote Tong, the Kiribati president, said he was in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be housed. Some of Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls, which straddle the equator over 1,350,000 square miles of ocean, are already disappearing beneath the waves.

Most of its 113,000 people are crammed on to Tarawa, the administrative centre, a chain of islets which curve in a horseshoe shape around a lagoon.

"This is the last resort, there's no way out of this one," Mr Tong said. "Our people will have to move as the tides have reached our homes and villages."

Mr Tong said the plan would be to send a trickle of skilled workers first, so they could merge more easily with the Fijian population and make a positive contribution to that country's economy.

"We don't want 100,000 people from Kiribati coming to Fiji in one go," he told the state-run Fiji One television channel.

"They need to find employment, not as refugees but as immigrant people with skills to offer, people who have a place in the community, people who will not be seen as second-class citizens.

"What we need is the international community to come up with an urgent funding package to deal with that ambition, and the needs of countries like Kiribati."

The land Kiribati wants to buy is understood to be on Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island.

Mr Tong's proposal is the latest in an increasingly desperate search for solutions.

Last year he suggested the possibility of constructing man-made islands like oil rigs for people to live on.

His government has launched an Education for Migration programme, aimed at upskilling its population to make them more attractive as migrants.

Kiribati youngsters study for degrees at the University of the South Pacific, which is based in the Fijian capital of Suva and jointly owned by 12 Pacific island countries. Dr Alumita Durulato, a lecturer in international affairs at the university, said: "They are already preparing quite well. They have educated their youth to be able to survive in the new lands that they want to go to. They are going to leave behind their culture, their way of life and lifestyle, which is a little bit different from ours in Fiji."

Tarawa lies 1,400 miles from Suva and some i-Kiribati, as the islanders are known, hold concerns about whether their culture would survive after the population moves, especially if those who leave first are mainly the young.

A member of the Commonwealth, Kiribati was known as the Gilbert islands until independence from Britain in 1979. The islands were first named after Thomas Gilbert, a British naval captain who navigated the archipelago in 1788, Kiribati being the local pronunciation of "Gilbert". The total land area is 313 square miles and none of the coral atolls rises more than a few feet above sea level.

Just go and have a look at the Climate Change Unit website of the Environment and Conservation Division of Kiribati, and I suspect that you will be impressed. Check out all their resources and links. These people are addressing climate change adaptation in the most dramatic yet realistic and thoughtful way possible - perhaps they could act as expert advisors to coastal communities elsewhere in the world?

Oh, and by the way, Kiribati is where the latest developments in the search for Amelia Earhart’s plane are making the news.

 

[Photos of Kiribati flooding from the Environment and Conservation Division website; satellite image of Aranuka atoll courtesy Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center]

The costs of ignoring science

 
Cue sounds of timpani, stage left and stage right. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a drum-banging post about coastal management myopia; now, recent reports compel me to continue my instrumental activity. So let’s think a little about the implications of rising sea levels (emphasis on the word think).

It is a fact (which I choose to define as something supported by observation, measurement, and analysis – in other words, science) that sea levels have been rising and it is reasonable to infer that this will continue. The world is, in general, warming, and the laws of physics (if you choose to accept them) require that warming oceans expand in volume; the cause of the warming, and any so-called debate over human influence, is irrelevant. Expanding ocean volumes have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is, inevitably, low-lying coastal land. OK so far? Anything really to challenge here? Those questions are, of course, essentially rhetorical since I have good reason to believe that readers of this blog are capable of independent, rational thought. Now here’s the tricky bit: predicting the magnitude of future sea level rise at any place on the planet is not easy – there is (oh dear) some uncertainty associated with this. But perhaps we can, nevertheless, attempt to come to grips with this uncertainty, and plan accordingly? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be “no.”

In that previous post, I mentioned NC20, the lobbying organisation of twenty North Carolina counties, who declare that they “concentrate primarily on actions to prevent regulation and rule making not based on science.” That statement would imply that, in turn, they would support regulation that is based on science, yes? No. When presented with a report by the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) in which a group of nineteen scientists presented an assessment of sea level rise, the response by the NC20 Board Members (credentials) was as follows:

Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment to date was the complete reversal of the draft policy of CRC regarding Sea Level Rise (SLR). The draft policy presented by the Science Panel of the CRC mandated a planning component of 39 inches of SLR across the CAMA area. NC 20 Board members met in a private meeting with the Chair of the CRC and carefully laid out the unscientific assumptions used in the draft report, showing the numerous errors and inconsistencies. In the final presentation, all “mandates” were removed and the final document showed a sensitivity to the needs of the counties, the role of the CRC, and the need for a relationship characterized by scientific advice and assistance on the part of the CRC rather than ironfisted dictates. The “redlined” version of that final document is attached for your review.

Follow the link and you will see the original policy wording (deleted) and its replacement (I shall resist commenting):

And here, just for a laugh, are the "unscientific assumptions" on North Carolina sea-level rise (taken from the CRC report):

So this really is about noise: the decibels from the drumbeats and grinding axes of vested interest lobbying easily drown out the voices of nineteen scientists.

But for those who heroically maintain an interest in science and how it can inform planning and economics, let’s turn to the couple of recent reports that I mentioned, that address exactly this topic. First, there has been a fair level of justified (but not particularly cacophonous) buzz in the media about a report from Climate Central titled Surging Seas: Sea level rise, storms, and global warming’s threat to the US coast, published on the 14th March, simultaneously with the research being published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters. Two pieces from the New York Times (grounds, I sadly realise, for them to be dismissed), one by Andy Revkin, the other by Justin Gillis, summarise the findings from the report. As Revkin quotes from the report, which makes it clear that it is not simple sea level rise itself, but associated storm surges that represent the threat:

Rising seas dramatically increase the odds of damaging floods from storm surges. For over two-thirds of the locations analyzed (and for 85% of sites outside the Gulf of Mexico), past and future global warming more than doubles the estimated odds of “century” or worse floods occurring within the next 18 years — meaning floods so high they would historically be expected just once per century. For over half the locations analyzed, warming at least triples the odds of century-plus floods over the same period. And for two-thirds the locations, sea level rise from warming has already more than doubled the odds of such a flood even this year….

Sea level rise has already cost governments and private landowners billions of dollars as they have pumped sand onto eroding beaches and repaired the damage from storm surges.

Insurance companies got out of the business of writing flood insurance decades ago, so much of the risk from sea level rise is expected to fall on the financially troubled National Flood Insurance Program, set up by Congress, or on state insurance pools. Federal taxpayers also heavily subsidize coastal development when the government pays to rebuild infrastructure destroyed in storm surges and picks up much of the bill for private losses not covered by insurance.

For decades, coastal scientists have argued that these policies are foolhardy, and that the nation must begin planning an orderly retreat from large portions of its coasts, but few politicians have been willing to embrace that message or to warn the public of the rising risks.

Some further selected key points:

• By 2030, storm surges combined with rising seas could raise waters to 4 feet (1.2 metres) or more above high tide lines at many locations; 4.9 million people live in 2.6 million homes in this vulnerable zone between the observed high tide and the top of expected flood waters.
• In 285 coastal cities and towns, more than half the population lives below the 4-foot mark, the Climate Central report found. Florida has 106 of these at-risk municipalities; Louisiana has 65, New Jersey and North Carolina have 22 each, Maryland has 14, New York has 13 and Virginia has 10.
• For two-thirds of the locations, sea level rise from warming has already at least doubled the annual risk of century-plus floods.
• The population and homes exposed are just part of the story. Flooding to four feet would reach higher than a huge amount of dry land, covering some 3.0 million acres of roads, bridges, commercial buildings, military bases, agricultural lands, toxic waste dumps, schools, hospitals, and more.

And a couple of quotes from Ben Strauss, one of the lead scientists authoring the report:

Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing. We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas….

A lot of the state [of Florida] is built on porous bedrock, bedrock that's like Swiss cheese. You can't practically build a wall to keep the sea out. The water will come up through the ground….

Right now the projection for the end of the century is two to seven feet of sea level rise and seven feet would put a lot of Lower Manhattan under water if we didn’t build sea walls to protect it. 

So, if the Board of NC20 were to read this report, what would they find about their state? Well, the report’s website has an excellent interactive map, and a series of fact sheets on each state; here are some headlines for North Carolina:

• Odds of a 100‐year flood or worse by 2030, with sea level rise from global warming: 24% (odds without global warming: 9%)
• Historic local sea level rise rate: 0.8 inches/decade; projected new sea level rise by 2050: 11 inches 
• Population at risk: 76,000
• Homes at risk: 56,000 
• Land area at risk: 1.2 million acres
• Towns and cities where at least half the population is at risk: 22 
• Counties where at least 10% of the population is at risk: 9
  

Perhaps grounds for a little planning effort? Supported by facts? Incorporating some science?

And then there’s the recently published study whose focus is on California; the study "Estimating the Potential Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Southern California Beaches," is featured in a special edition of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change, and is the work of researchers at Duke University. The study again looks at the effects of sea level rise in the long term, and the short term effects of storms. As reported in Science Daily  last month:

While some beaches may shrink or possibly disappear, others are poised to remain relatively large -- leaving an uneven distribution of economic gains and losses for coastal beach towns, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and five other institutions.

"Some beaches actually stand to benefit economically from sea level rise, creating winners and losers among California beach towns," said Linwood Pendleton, director of ocean and coastal policy at Duke's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. "We found, as relatively small beaches shrink more due to sea level rise, people will stop visiting them, opting for wider beaches."

The same topic was addressed last year in a report by economists at San Francisco State University that examined the economic effects of sea level rise and storms on five California coastal communities:

The results suggest that visitor hotspots like Venice Beach could lose up to $440 million in tourism revenue between now and 2100 if sea levels rise by 4.6 feet (1.4 meters), a projection specific to the California coast, based on recent scientific studies. At San Francisco's Ocean Beach, accelerated erosion could cause up to $540 million worth of damage.

"Sea level rise will send reverberations throughout local and state economies," said Philip King, associate professor of economics at San Francisco State University. "We also found that the economic risks and responses to a changing coastline will vary greatly over time and from beach to beach."

Here, as an example, are the estimated impacts on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach: 

Ocean Beach (north of Sloat Boulevard), San Francisco County

Based on a sea level rise estimate of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters) by 2100, Ocean Beach could lose:

• $19.6 million in damages caused by a 100-year coastal flood damaging homes and contents. This is an increase of 200 percent from the present day risk of a 100-year flood, which is $6.5 million
• $82 million in tourism spending and local and state tax revenue losses (accumulated between now and 2100) caused by a narrower, eroded beach attracting fewer visitors
• $16.5 million in habitat and recreation losses, caused by erosion reducing the beach area by 92 percent (53 acres lost). Ocean Beach provides a habitat for native species such as the Western Snowy Plover, a bird that is federally listed as a threatened species
• $540 million caused by land, buildings and infrastructure being lost or damaged by erosion and subsidence

The facts, the predictions, the costs, the social implications, are there to be found, whether the result of work by universities, government agencies, or – as I happened upon – even the real estate “community.” The property site, World Property Channel, published the results of a “Special report: Long Island, Miami Have Highest Property Exposure to Storm Surge Damage as Hurricane Season Approaches” that was accompanied by dramatic graphics and the following figures:

Of the metro areas studied in the report, Long Island was found to have the highest exposure to risk, valued at $99 billion, followed by the Miami-Palm Beach region and Virginia Beach. Projected exposure to storm surge damage for the ten geographies is as follows:

Long Island, NY - $99 billion, Miami-Dade, FL - $44.9 billion, Virginia Beach, VA - $44.6 billion, New Orleans, LA - $39 billion, Tampa, FL - $27 billion, Houston, TX - $20 billion, Jacksonville, FL - $19.6 billion, Charleston, SC - $17.7 billion, Corpus Christi, TX - $4.7 billion, Mobile, AL - $3 billion

But, silly me, I’m forgetting that all this work, all these “facts," are flawed by “unscientific assumptions… showing the numerous errors and inconsistencies.”

 

[Photographs: the surge before the storm swamps Galveston Island, Texas, and a fire destroys homes along the beach as Hurricane Ike approaches. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip). Flooding over access road 523 to Surfside beach, caused by Hurricane Ike forming in the Gulf of Mexico, is seen near Surfside Beach, Texas. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria). And http://myhydros.org/more-about-water/storm-surge/]

 

 

"Our own little bridge to nowhere"

As someone who tries to write regularly on diverse topics that not only interest me, but, hopefully, interest others, an occasional gift horse appears, or, to mix metaphors, a whopping great drum that is just asking to be beaten – again. There have been a few drums over the course of this blog, but none appearing so regularly as the one representing the issues of coastal management – a veritable timpano, together with seductively large drumsticks just begging to be taken up and used. And here’s that drum again. 

 
Last year, I wrote a short piece on the aftermath of Hurricane Irene on the barrier islands of the Outer Banks. By the time the storm hit Hatteras, it was no longer a major hurricane, but nevertheless, it played the game that storms and barrier islands have always enjoyed, dramatically re-designing the geography by creating new inlets that sliced and diced the thin strips of sand. Highway 12, the “lifeline” of the Outer Banks, was cut in two places. As described in this New York Times article (titled “A North Carolina Lifeline Built on Shifting Sands” and spotted by an alert reader, Stephan Bossert), a temporary bridge was quickly constructed and the highway was back in operation in October last year. But “temporary” just goes with the territory in the saga of a barrier island, and the bridge is already in trouble:

By January, engineers were reinforcing its southern approach with sandbags and rock trucked in from the mainland, in hopes of keeping the road open until a more permanent fix could be designed and built.

And, unfortunately, this is only one of a series of problems that afflict this shape-shifting chain of islands:

Last summer, the state confronted what engineers called “advanced deterioration” of the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, which carries the highway from Nags Head to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, on the north end of Hatteras Island… The state opted for a replacement bridge that will run right alongside the existing span; planning is under way.

Now I have cited on numerous occasions in this blog, the wisdom of Robert S. Young, a coastal geologist who is head of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, in particular during the Gulf Coast berms fiasco. Young calls the replacement bridge project “our own little bridge to nowhere.”

They can engineer that bridge so well that it can withstand a Category 3 or 4 hurricane,” Dr. Young said in a telephone interview. “The barrier island it is connected to cannot."

And there is the nail (or the drum) hit firmly on the head. As the NYT article notes:

Barrier islands like the Outer Banks are inherently unstable. Waves typically strike these islands at a slight angle, creating currents that pick up sand and carry it along the coast. The wave energy along the Outer Banks is unusually strong; by some estimates 700,000 cubic yards of sand, enough to fill 70,000 average-size dump trucks, moves along that stretch of coast every year.

At the new bridge, evidence of this process appeared even on opening day, in the form of long-necked black water birds called cormorants perching on a spit of sand that had formed near the north side of the bridge. That spit had not been there a few days before, said Pablo Hernandez, the transportation department engineer who managed the bridge work.

“It’s very difficult,” he said. “This whole thing has been constantly moving and shifting.”

As he spoke, waves were already starting to cut sharply into the sand at the bridge’s southern flank, an area the engineers later reinforced.

and

Already, Highway 12 floods repeatedly and is often cut by storms. Maintaining it “is totally a lost cause,” said Stanley R. Riggs, a coastal scientist at East Carolina University who is an author of a new book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast,” which describes in depressing detail the difficulties of keeping the road open. “It will bankrupt the state,” he said.

Now that book by Riggs and his colleagues is clearly one to add to the top of the list, another rational discussion of the science – what we know and what we don’t know – in managing complex coastal systems. But, as has been the case on so many occasions and in so many different places, the science is ignored and its proponents branded as pessimists in the face of vested commercial and residential interests. The loudest beating of the drum comes from lobbying groups who have the clout that mere academics do not. In this particular case, it’s the likes of NC20 and The Land Alliance of North Carolina. “Better Science for Better Policy” is the rallying cry of the latter group, and one of the former’s goals (mixed in with links to alternative views of man’s effect on climate change) is “To advocate for science based environmental rulemaking in all areas of environmental regulation.” These groups play the tired old game of “the science isn’t conclusive” to audiences who are not equipped to judge whether this is reasonable or even relevant. It’s a tired old game, but it’s an axe that grinds loudly (along with the timpani). These groups trumpet (is there no end to the orchestral references?) their major victory of persuading the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission to emasculate the section in their recent planning document that addressed issues of sea-level rise.

Sections of the book by Stanley Riggs et al. can be viewed online, and the first chapter, “Why is there a coastal conflict?” concludes with the following statement – one for which the biggest drum, the loudest axe, and the most brazen trumpet should be made available and listened to:

Our vision for the future of coastal North Carolina now requires the wisdom of policymakers and the concerted efforts of the public, coastal businesses, government agencies, and politicians to integrate science into management, informed by an awareness that our changing coastal system has natural limits to growth and development. If we are sufficiently farsighted, we can sustain a viable coastal economy in relation to the processes of change and, in doing so, preserve the natural resources on which that economy is based. As a result, more potential economic benefits would arise in the future than the current approach to coastal development could provide.

What are our alternatives? We must understand how the coastal system works and accept that reality. We must consider the challenges of coastal change to be opportunities. We can then determine the best ways to maintain our coastal economy and new ways to make a living on the coast. We should embrace the historical culture and the wild remoteness of the barrier islands and parlay those attributes into economic advantage.

Lying vehicles

It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people -- who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations -- do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies. (Mark Twain, 1873)

The laurels on which I was complacently resting after my fervent New Year’s wish for Earth Science Literacy have instantly withered, and my understanding of the heroic – if not futile and stupid – nature of my wish cruelly underlined. I reproduce for you below, essentially in its entirety, a piece published on Tuesday by one John Trumbo of the Tri-City Herald in the State of Washington. This was taken up by a number of newspapers, both online (the sadly misnamed “Seattle Post Intelligencer”) and hardcopy. And it appeared as news. Read this and weep – scarcely a sentence goes by that does not include utter, mind-boggling-numbing, lying, rubbish. I despair.

Richland man sees sandstone proof of global flood

WEST RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — A swirling, twisting sandstone formation in northern Arizona is evidence of Noah's flood, says a West Richland man who recently visited the unusual geologic phenomenon.

Greg Morgan, a nuclear safety engineer at Hanford, said he was amazed to see sandstone resembling waves, whirlpools and reversing currents that appear to have been frozen in place.

Morgan's photographs of The Wave and his article, "Flood Currents Frozen in Stone," are in the latest issue of Answers magazine, a quarterly publication of Answers in Genesis, a Christian creation research organization based in Petersburg, Ky. The nonprofit organization's 70,000-square-foot facility also houses the Creation Museum.

Mike Matthews, editor of Answers, said the way the layers of sandstone came to rest at Paria Canyon "fits with the viewpoint that these are flood layers."

But the strongest evidence of a global flood is in the sandstone itself, he said.

"It's that the layers themselves have been traced out worldwide, even to Europe and the Mideast," Mathews said.

The Wave at Paria provides a little more -- what Matthews called important "signature details."

Morgan, who is a mechanical engineer and worked in the aviation industry before coming to Hanford, said he was shocked when he first saw a picture of The Wave because it contradicted his original thinking about an ancient Earth and evolution.

Morgan, who became a Christian as an adult and takes the Bible literally, said the convoluted formations at Paria Canyon forced him to consider there must be another explanation.

"There are no broken rocks. All of this happened when it was still mud," Morgan said.

Morgan first visited The Wave at Paria Canyon in 2008 and again in September, each time taking many photographs he later could study.

The whirlpools suggest the stone was flowing, as if it was a slurry of sand that suddenly froze in place, he said.

"This is excellent evidence for Noah's flood. It is far better than what anyone believes for an ancient Earth," Morgan said.

The formation itself is classified as Jurassic Navajo Sandstone, and according to conventional "old Earth" geology, was formed 200 million years ago when seasonal winds laid down the layers to create the dramatic land forms.

Morgan explains it differently in his article for Answers magazine.

"Creation geologists believe huge sand waves were piled up and laid down deep under the ocean water. The fast currents then created tell-tale features, known as cross beds or 'striations,' with the steep cut-offs we see today," Morgan wrote in support of a global flood event.

The article also mentions that the sand at The Wave has been identified as having come from the Appalachians, about 1,800 miles to the east.

Moses' account in Genesis of Noah's flood describes a worldwide inundation that covered even the tallest mountains.

Morgan, who initially thought The Wave was just an example of water and wind erosion cutting through many layers of sandstone, says the evidence at Paria Canyon shows "what Moses wrote was true."

"I may be the first among creation geologists to openly promote this as evidence of Noah's flood," he said.

If such a cataclysmic flood event deposited the twisted layers of sand and whirlpools that later were to turn to stone, then how did the flood currents frozen in stone become exposed in a waterless desert?

Morgan believes a second flood catastrophe -- perhaps similar to the Ice Age floods that scoured Eastern Washington thousands of years ago -- unleashed icy waters that ravaged the Southwest, as well.

That would account for the rapid erosion in Paria Canyon and in the Grand Canyon, which is about 70 miles south of The Wave, he said.

"About half the people I've talked to say, 'Yeah, that's proof the Earth is young,' " Morgan said.

Andrew Snelling, who has a doctorate in geology and is a content editor for Answers magazine, said two items of evidence at Paria Canyon point to a massive flood event.

One concerns analysis of grinds in the sandstone at Paria, which match mineral sources in the Appalachians. It would take a lot of wave action to move sand that far, he said.

And the sheer size of the Paria sandstone cross beds, at more than 100 feet thick, would need a massive wave -- a tsunami-sized wall of water -- in order to be laid down as they are. Snelling said such a wave would have to be twice as high as the bed of sand it deposits, which is on the scale of a global flood.

"The volume of sand we see out there is enormous. We don't see anything like that happening today," Snelling noted.

Mr. Trumbo, you are welcome to get in touch with me – or any other professional geologist - should the bizarre notion of adding a counter-argument disturb your intellectual complacency.

A selection, a reflection, and a wish for 2012

It’s that time of the year when I, for one, am grateful that the endless reflections in the media on the previous twelve months must come to an end – the events and non-events, the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the progress or otherwise, the marriages and divorces of mediocre “celebrities,” the genuinely positive and the utterly banal. There will be one list here, but of a different nature.

It’s impossible to avoid some form of reflection as we approach the New Year, and, out of curiosity, I have looked at the activity on this blog over the last month, the most recent few thousand visits (from, pleasingly, 117 different countries), and tried to discern why the top ten and the bottom ten posts were ranked that way. I gave up (other than appreciating that critters are always popular). But, since one of the (many) reasons that anyone tries to keep up an entertaining blog is some kind of satisfaction, I reflected on which of the top ten – and, even more interestingly – which of the bottom ten posts I would select as ones that I remain in one way or another pleased with.

Selecting from the top ten was easy – I derive considerable pleasure from the fact that the piece on Gaudi and the sandstones of Barcelona, although written nearly two years ago, seems to have an enduring popularity. As for the bottom ten, this was more of a challenge; some of them are trivial and their lowly rankings quite understandable. But I find it vaguely depressing that the post on last year’s Earth Science Week and Earth Science Literacy attracted 0.02% of the visits.  

The headline statement from the Earth Science Literacy initiative is as follows:

An Earth-science-literate public, informed by current and accurate scientific understanding of Earth, is critical to the promotion of good stewardship, sound policy, and international cooperation. Earth science education is important for individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities.

And here (now for the third time on this blog) are the “Big Ideas” from that program:

Big Idea 1. Earth scientists use repeatable observations and testable ideas to understand and explain our planet.

Big Idea 2. Earth is 4.6 billion years old.

Big Idea 3. Earth is a complex system of interacting rock, water, air, and life.

Big Idea 4. Earth is continuously changing.

Big Idea 5. Earth is the water planet.

Big Idea 6. Life evolves on a dynamic Earth and continuously modifies Earth.

Big Idea 7. Humans depend on Earth for resources.

Big Idea 8. Natural hazards pose risks to humans.

Amid all the reflections on 2012, it’s hard to find evidence for an improvement in earth science literacy – in fact, the evidence seems to argue for the reverse. Loudest among the voices shouting for our attention are those of politicians with axes to grind and elections to win and those of the information-challenged electorates to whom they pander. And it’s easy (assuming, of course, that you agree with me) to focus immediately on the U.S., where the truth seems to increasingly go missing on a daily basis. But it’s not just there – the UK Government axes libraries and science funding and encourages schools to be run by people with an overtly religious agenda; the blitz of misinformation following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami was truly mind-boggling; Germany reverses its position on nuclear power overnight with no reference to science, risk assessment, or the environmental implications. And as for any international cooperation on management of our planet’s resources, well, I rest my case.

So, looking forward (as I prefer to do), here’s my fervent wish for 2012:

A YEAR FROM NOW, MAY A LARGER PROPORTION OF THE EARTH’S POPULATION SUBSCRIBE, SERIOUSLY, THOUGHTFULLY, AND ACTIVELY, TO THOSE BIG IDEAS THAN IS THE CASE TODAY.

Before and after Irene: spot the difference

 
I hardly need comment – before Irene, I wrote the “Nourish or Retreat?” post and then she proceeded to underscore the validity of the question. The USGS has, of course, some provocative images, a number of which I have reproduced here, and we all look forward to their more detailed analysis. I shall simply introduce a gallery of selected images with some pre-Irene words from Orrin Pilkey, guru emeritus of coastal processes, extracted from an article in the Los Angeles Times in which he described how sand supplied by large magnitude storms is essential to the survival of barrier islands:

The storm that is coming up the coast here is just what the islands need. We are going to see an awful lot of buildings destroyed and an awful lot of buildings damaged, and because it's so slow-moving, there are not only going to be high winds and big waves, but they are going to last a long time. A naturalist living on a barrier island knows that protecting your house is not a good thing, because protecting your house ends up destroying the beach.

 



I’ll end with a piece from Live Science, during Hurricane Ike back in 2008 and titled “Ike Underscores Foolishness of Building on Barrier Islands.” Note that Pilkey had a few words of wisdom here too:

"Barrier islands are exposed to the open ocean, and the waves and storm surges generated by hurricanes," said Bob Morton, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. "As a storm makes landfall they're the ones that are going to receive the strongest winds and the highest wave actions."

Barrier islands like Galveston are particularly vulnerable to storm damage because they are made of sand, as opposed to the hard bedrock that underlies larger islands and the mainland. They also tend to have very low elevations, making it easy for water to wash over and submerge the island.

Many have questioned the wisdom of choosing to build on and develop barrier islands, given their risks.

"Every year there's reporting on the foolishness of building on barrier islands, but people are going to do it anyway," Morton told LiveScience. "We don't learn from the past. If you look at the barrier islands on the Mississippi coast in particular, after both Hurricane Camille in 1969, and Katrina, what did they do? They rebuilt. It's a perfect example of a coastal area that did get hit as bad as it can get, and they just go back and rebuild."

Barrier islands tend to be even riskier places to live than coastal areas, because they bear the brunt of any approaching storm impact.

"If you think about their location, they're basically lonely sentinels that serve as barriers for the mainland," said Clark Alexander, a marine geologist at Georgia's Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. "Basically you're in a vulnerable spot, because you're located where you get the first effects of anything coming in off the ocean."

Setting up residence in these vulnerable spots is particularly perilous.

"From a safety standpoint, it's silly," Alexander said. "Because the lifespan of a typical house is something like 60 years. But if you live on a barrier island, you can't guarantee you'll have land under your house in 60 years. It's trying to put something permanent in a place that’s very dynamic."

As a result of Hurricane Katrina, a number of barrier islands off the Mississippi coast were completely wiped off the map. Even when storms aren't enough to raze islands completely, barriers often suffer severe damage from storms.

The 1989 Hurricane Hugo wreaked massive havoc on Pawleys Island in South Carolina. Isles Dernieres off the coast of Louisiana was devastated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Often, after these storms, people move back and set themselves up for disaster again.

St. George Island on Apalachicola Bay off the Florida coast "has been washed away five or six or eight times and people just keep building back their houses," Alexander said.

For many people living on barrier islands, there is no amount of structural support that can ward off the worst.

"It's important to note that in the big storms, the category 4 or 5 hurricanes, it really doesn't matter how well-constructed your building is," said Orrin Pilkey, a professor emeritus of geology at Duke University, of homes on barrier islands. "And it doesn't matter whether you have a seawall or not. The chances are pretty good that if you have beachfront property, it's history."

Isn’t it about time we seriously addressed the question of whether further expenditure of money and resources in a futile and puny effort to battle natural processes is actually worth it?

But here we go again, shifting New Jersey sand around just days after Irene.

[Thanks to the USGS, AP, CNN and other sources for the images. For more on barrier islands, just put “barrier” into the search function on this blog.] 

Where does Singapore come from?

 
This may seem at first glance a stupid question, and the answer – Cambodia – even sillier. But it’s a fact. The tiny island nation of Singapore is home to a booming economy and the growth that goes along with it, not just commercial expansion, but physical. Singapore today is 120 square kilometres bigger than it was 50 years ago, and will grow by another 100 square kilometres over the next twenty years. And all these square kilometres can only be attained in one way – reclamation, otherwise known as filling in the sea. Filling in the sea with sand, huge volumes of sand. Singapore itself essentially has no sand, so it has to come, by one means or another, from elsewhere, and until a few years ago elsewhere was largely Indonesia. But, after the disappearance of several islands, Indonesia banned arenaceous exports. So where does Singapore go now? Cambodia – although note that Singapore does not disclose its sources. And is this all legal? Is it conducted after due environment impact assessment?  

I will simply leave the answers to these questions open, to be addressed by a recent article by Denis D. Gray of the Associated Press, that appeared in a number of publications recently, including the local English language newspaper here in Jakarta. I will, with further credits listed at the end of this post, simply take the liberty of reproducing this fascinating and depressing piece in its entirety.

 

Sand for sale; environment ravaged

By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press

Round a bend in Cambodia's Tatai River and the virtual silence of a tropical idyll turns suddenly into an industrial nightmare.

Lush jungle hills give way to a flotilla of dredgers operating 24 hours a day, scooping up sand and piling it onto ocean-bound barges. The churned-up waters and fuel discharges, villagers say, have decimated the fish so vital to their livelihoods. Riverbanks are beginning to collapse, and the din and pollution are killing a promising ecotourism industry.

What is bad news for the poor, remote Tatai community is great tidings for Singapore, the wealthy city-state that is expanding its territory by reclaiming land from the sea. Sand from nearby countries is the prime landfill and also essential building material for Singapore's spectacular skyline.

As more countries ban its export to curb environmental damage -- entire Indonesian islands have been all but wiped off the map -- suppliers to Singapore scour the region for what still can be obtained, legally or not. Cambodia, a poor country where corruption is rife and laws are often flouted, is now the No. 1 source.

Singapore is by no means the only nation taking part in what is a global harvest of sand from beaches, rivers and seabeds. Officials and environmentalists from China to Morocco have voiced concern and urged curbs. As construction booms in emerging economies and more sources dry up, however, exploitation of the remaining ones is likely to intensify.

Sand mining began anew in May on southwestern Tatai River, which empties into the ocean almost directly north of Singapore, across 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of open water.

Despite denials by the main owner of sand mining rights in Koh Kong province, two Cambodian officials told The Associated Press that the sand is destined for the island nation.

Singapore will not say where its sand comes from; the Construction and Building Authority said it is not public information. The National Development Ministry said the state's infrastructure development company buys it from "a diverse range of approved sources."

The mining visible on the Tatai River clearly violates some of Cambodia's own legal restrictions, not to mention a recent government order to suspend it temporarily.

Vessels of a Vietnamese company were tracked by boat from about 10 kilometers (6 miles) upriver to the Gulf of Thailand, where nearly a dozen seagoing barges, tugs hovering around them, took on the sand.

The AZ Kunming Singapore, a 5,793-ton (5,255-metric ton) barge pulled by the AZ Orchid, was seen arriving empty from the open ocean, its tug flying a Singaporean flag. Both are registered with the Singapore government, which would not comment on the barge's cargo or destination.

Ships from several countries, including China, were spotted in sand-mining operations in Koh Kong province, where residents joked about going to Singapore and planting a Cambodian flag there.

The vessels included one from Winton Enterprises, a Hong Kong-registered group that was subcontracted to export sand to Singapore, according to Global Witness, a London-based environmental group that published a detailed account of the trade last year.

The report said that miners had penetrated protected mangrove, estuary and sea grass areas, breeding grounds for marine life along a coastline and hinterland harboring some of the country's last wilderness areas.

Cambodia's cabinet spokesman, Siphan Phay, who was investigating the issue in Koh Kong, appeared angry that the temporary halt order was being ignored. He described the activity as illegal mining destined for Singapore, a surprising statement given that government ministers awarded the concession.

A police officer in the economic crime division, who demanded anonymity given the issue's sensitivity, also said the sand is going to Singapore.

Ly Yong Phat, who holds the major concession in Koh Kong, has at times openly acknowledged the Singapore connection. But in a recent AP interview, amid tightening restrictions and mounting criticism, he said his company had not shipped sand to Singapore for more than a year because "our sand did not meet their standards."

The dredging, he added, was for local sale and to deepen river channels.

However, a Malaysian company, Benalec Holdings, said it was ready to tap up to 530,000 tons for a reclamation project in Singapore from several sources in Cambodia, including Ly Yong Phat's LYP Group.

Known as the "King of Koh Kong," Ly Yong Phat is one of Cambodia's biggest tycoons and a senator with close ties to Prime Minister Hun Sen. His holdings include hotels, a casino and agricultural plantations.

Land reclamation has enlarged Singapore by more than a fifth, and up to 100 square kilometers (nearly 40 square miles) more are slated for reclamation by 2030. What was once seabed is now Changi, among the world's finest airports, and more recently the Marina Bay complex, which includes a 2,560-room hotel and casino developed by Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Mountains of sand are needed for such fills. U.N. statistics show Singapore imported 14.6 million tons last year, ranking it among the world's top customers. Global Witness estimated that nearly 800,000 tons a year, worth some $248 million, were streaming to Singapore from Koh Kong alone.

The U.N. figures show that Cambodia supplied 25 percent of Singapore's imports in 2010, followed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar and the Philippines. With its secrecy and lax enforcement of environmental regulations, Myanmar could emerge as a major supplier.

The damage caused by sand extraction has spurred clampdowns on exports.

Malaysia imposed a ban in 1997, though the media there frequently report on massive smuggling into neighboring Singapore. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad complains that sand pirates are "digging Malaysia and giving her to other people."

An Indonesian ban came in 2007, following years of strained relations with Singapore over the sand on islands lying between the two countries. When miners finished with Nipah Island, reportedly all that was left was three or four palm trees protruding above the waterline. Environmental groups say smuggling is believed to be continuing.

Vietnam banned exports late last year.

Cambodia outlawed the export of sand from rivers in 2009 but allows it from some seabeds. Recently, some government officials said that rivers where seawater flowed into fresh water, replenishing sand naturally, were exempt.

Global Witness spokesman Oliver Courtney said the trade in Cambodia revealed a "mismatch between Singapore's reliance on questionably sourced sand and its position as a leader for sustainable development." The city-state prides itself on environmentally sound urban planning.

The dredging of the Tatai River began on May 17 "with a fury," creating a veritable traffic jam on the water, said Janet Newman, owner of the riverside Rainbow Lodge.

"Before you could see crab pots bobbing in the river everywhere and fishermen going out. Now there is nothing and nobody," the British woman said.

Chea Manith of the Nature Tourism Community of Tatai said 270 families along the river have seen an estimated 85 percent drop in catch of fish, crab and lobsters and were being forced to eke out a living from small garden plots. Tourists have all but vanished.

Armed with a petition, village leaders, tourism operators and a wildlife group met with Ly Yong Phat in early July. He appeared sympathetic, Newman said. He substantially reduced the dredging and has promised to stop altogether in October.

A subsequent letter from the Minister of Water Resources and Meteorology ordered the LYP group to halt operations temporarily on the Tatai, citing a breach of regulations. The letter was obtained by Cambodia's Phnom Penh Post newspaper, which made it available to the AP.

Hun Sen himself expressed concern over the mining in the river.

"We hoped that the prime minister's recent promise to review the impacts of the sand trade would lead to proper regulation of dredging operations," said Courtney of Global Witness. "Unfortunately, the pledge does not appear to have been followed up with meaningful action."

The mining has continued on the Tatai, and violations, such as dredging closer than 150 meters (165 yards) from riverbanks, were clearly evident.

The Post also obtained a Ministry of Industry, Mining and Energy letter extending LYP Group's concession in Koh Kong until Sept. 2012.

"We are just little people. We cannot do anything," Chea Manith said.

Newman sounded a more optimistic note. "It's my hope that the LYP Group will become sympathetic through this experience of having seen the reaction from people passionate about protecting their environment," she said. "It would be sad if they just went somewhere else to dump the same on others."

 

[Associated Press writers Sean Yoong in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Alex Kennedy in Singapore; Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines; Aye Aye Win in Yangon, Myanmar; and Sopheng Cheang in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, contributed to this report.]

A book I look forward to reading

I have referred several times in the past to Orrin H. Pilkey, James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Geology at Duke University. Now, together with colleagues from the US and Northern Ireland, he has published what promises to be an informative, entertaining, and provocative read - The World's Beaches: A Global Guide to the Science of the Shoreline. 

I haven't, of course, got my hands on a copy yet, but a review in the New York Times simply confirms that anything by Pilkey is required reading. The review is titled "Shorelines, Sandy or Otherwise, That May Not Last." The conclusion echoes the issue that I posted on a couple of months ago:

But, the authors conclude, unless society chooses beaches over buildings the result will be a world in which parks like the National Seashores retain natural beaches, but beach resorts elsewhere are “heavily walled and beachless.” Rising seas will make sand-pumping operations “untenable,” they predict, and tourists will amuse themselves by “promenading on top of a seawall” — already the principal activity in too many coastal resorts.

If they are right, by then the beaches this book describes will be a nostalgic memory.

The book is published by the University of California Press, to whom I will ever be grateful for publishing mine, and the New York Times review is by Cornelia Dean, whose own book, "Against the Tide: the Battle for America's Beaches," also falls into the required reading category.