Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 10 January 2011

Toxic pollution from flooded farms and towns along Australia’s Queensland coast will have a disastrous impact on the Great Barrier Reef’s corals and will likely have a significant impact on dugongs, turtles and other marine life, WWF warned today.

Toxic pollution from floods will impact on dugongs. Photograph by OSF/D. Fleetham/Animals Animals—Earth Scenes

“In addition to the terrible costs to farmers and communities in Queensland, we will also see a major and extremely harmful decline in water quality on the Great Barrier Reef,” said WWF spokesman Nick Heath.

Heath said the restoration of important woodlands in flood prone catchment areas of the Fitzroy River and Murray Darling Basin would help protect communities and the marine environment from future floods.

“Today’s floods are bigger, dirtier and more dangerous from excessive tree clearing, overgrazing and soil compaction. As a result less water infiltrates deep into the soil, increasing the size and erosive intensity of floods,” he said. Continue reading Great Barrier Reef threatened by toxic pollution