Page 9 - Acatchment News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Fundamentally, if you have a surplus, you are too much phosphorus in your environment, it is likely that you are going to have worse water quality. the data shows quite clearly, there are parts of the catchment where soil phosphorus levels are very high, if not a little bit too high. so those areas do not need phosphorus at the moment. they do not need muck spreading? no, they don't need muck or fertiliser or any phosphorus input. scientists here are clear, to start fixing the problem muck spreading should be stopped completely in some parts of the wye. there's a lot of algae. ew, you don't ha...

They estimate that around 7,500 tonnes of phosphorus gets into the soil around the river wye every year. much of that by spreading muck from poultry farms. but only some of that is absorbed by crops. the rest is extra. you're left with a difference of about 3000 tonnes of phosphorus that is above the crop requirement of what we would call a surplus. which is nationally very high, it's about 60% greater than the national average. fundamentally, if you have a surplus, you are too much phosphorus in your environment, it is likely that you are going to have worse water quality. the data shows quit...

It's used to feed cattle. we've just reach a point where rivers cannot cope any more with how they are being used and what we are putting into them. 0ur agricultural land use has changed. poultry units just did not exist at the top of that catchment 15 years ago. what we've seen is a huge burst of poultry units in a very short amount of time, which has saturated that landscape. there are startling figures on the number of intensive poultry farms that have sprung up. council only started keeping records from 2018. but we discovered the rapid growth in intensive farming started a decade earlier....

Of the country. and for sydney, a truly remarkable year, it's wettest in data going back to 1859, a record the city broke with nearly three months of the year still left. few places have been harder hit than lismore, one of the most flood—prone places in new south wales, but even here, the floods in february were the worst they'd known. we literally had water coming up from the ocean, water coming down from the catchment, and 800 millilitres of rain in about 24 hours landing on top of lismore, and it was literally the perfect storm. you know, there's no doubt that there is an issue with clim...

0tters have thrived in parts of the wye, along with other many rare species. it's one of the most protected rivers in britain because of this rich wildlife. all of our rivers in wales are now at risk of extinction from salmon and sea trout. gail has over 20 years experience in the water industry. she says that farming and sewage are having a combined affect. it's much more than the direct species and habitats within the river. so, our river is a source of drinking water, it's used by farmers as crop irrigation, it's used to feed cattle. we've just reach a point where rivers cannot cope any mor...