Indonesia: Government formulates regulation to encourage ships to manage waste

Antara 6 Sep 17;

Kuta, Bali, (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian government is currently preparing a regulation to encourage fishing boats and sightseeing ships to manage garbage, including plastic waste, in a bid to curb pollution at sea.

"We affirm and strengthen law enforcement for the existing regulation. Ships for fishing and tourism purposes are obligated to have trash cans," Deputy of Human Resources, Maritime Technology, and Culture of the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs Safri Burhanuddin stated after delivering a speech at the East Asia Conference for combating plastic waste held in Kuta, Badung District, Bali, on Wednesday.

According to Burhanuddin, one of the sources of plastic waste came from both small and large fishing and sightseeing ships.

Currently, the regulation is being formulated by the relevant agencies and is targeted to be completed in October 2017 in the form of a presidential regulation.

Based on the regulation being established, he said notification letters will be issued and addressed to the technical ministries and local governments in order to necessitate every ship to be able to manage its waste, especially plastic garbage.

"When the ships return to land, they have to bring their garbage home. If they do not follow the procedure, then it implies they might have thrown their garbage into the sea," he said.

He stated that Indonesia is committed to reducing 70 percent of its plastic waste at sea before 2025. Hence, cooperation among all parties, including from within and abroad, needs to be encouraged.

He said education is one of the key ways to encouraging the public to take care of the environment by at least reducing or managing plastic waste, as 80 percent of it came from the mainland.

"Most of the waste in the ocean is brought by the river. Hence, district and city governments need to control waste on land," he remarked.

He lauded the various parties, including business players in Indonesia, that have applied waste management and recycled garbage into high-value products.

The government is also promoting a policy of converting waste into a source of energy.

Currently, 15 cities in Indonesia, including Denpasar, Bali, are participating in a study to manage plastic waste at sea, including the use of asphalt in a road construction project at the Udayana University.

Reported by Dewa Wiguna
M052/INE
EDITED BY INE
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Australia: Century of die-offs takes toll on reef-building coral in central Great Barrier Reef

Bianca Nogrady ABC News 12 Sep 17;

Key points
* Little is known about the past coral mortality before the advent of long-term monitoring in the 1980s.
Analysis of dead corals in central Great Barrier Reef links mortality to a series of events occurring in the 1920s and 1960s and again in the 1980s and 1990s.
* Study suggests loss of resilience of hard corals, which once dominated the reef.
* Chemical dating of the Great Barrier Reef's sensitive branching corals reveals a history of massive die-offs over the past century, particularly in the past 30 years, from which these corals have not recovered.

The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggests the die-offs happened in conjunction with significant natural and anthropogenic events, such as large-scale weather patterns and changes in land use since European settlement.

The findings could also mean the effects of more recent bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 have been underestimated because of the long-lasting impacts of earlier die-offs, said lead researcher Tara Clark, a marine palaeoecologist at the University of Queensland and Griffith University.

Dr Clark said growing evidence suggested the Great Barrier Reef is in decline, but information about disruption events and the how the reef responds to stress only goes back around 30 years.

To understand how the reef had changed over a longer period of time, Dr Clark and colleagues dated samples of dead Acropora branching corals from a number of sites around the Palm Islands in the central Great Barrier Reef.

The technique — which is used to estimate when the coral died — allowed researchers to look back over a century of coral activity.

While earlier studies suggested branching corals were common in many parts of the reef, Dr Clark said their team's surveys showed these reef builders now make up less than 5 per cent of the coral population at the sites studied.

"There were some skeletons we picked up that were huge — the branches were as thick as your arm, these were massive branching corals so that's a very different shift in terms of community structure at a lot of these places," she said.

One site in particular — Pelorus Island — experienced a huge die-off of branching coral between the 1920s and 1950s.

Dr Clark said there weren't many environmental records from that time, but the die-off may have been caused by a combination of a shift towards a wetter weather pattern and an increase in sugar cane plantations and grazing in the area.

"What we suspect is there was potentially a lot of land clearing going on, you get this shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with huge rainfall and a huge amount of sediment being delivered out the Herbert River, just north of Pelorus Island," she said.

"Because Pelorus is the closest reef to the Herbert River, it's possible that these plumes came out and wiped them out then, and they've not been able to recover."

Instead, the reef is now dominated by algae, and small stony coral known as Pavona.

At the other four sites, the die-offs were more recent, taking place between 1970 and 2000.

In particular, there were peaks in coral death that corresponded to mass bleaching events that occurred with warmer sea surface temperatures around 1983, 1987, 1994 and 1998.

Dr Clark said what was most worrying was that at many of these 'death assemblages' of dead coral, there was very little sign of living Acropora, suggesting that these more sensitive coral species have not bounced back.

"I think it's cause for concern because if there was nothing [living] there, then the impact of these larger bleaching events that happened more recently [in 2016 and 2017] has been underrepresented and underestimated," she said.

She said long-term monitoring programs are critical to understanding of how the state of coral has changed over time.

"Being able to use these methods to look at disturbance and recovery and work out which reefs are vulnerable, which haven't come back from some of these disturbances, is really important," she said.


Coral loss on Palm Islands long precedes 2016 mass bleaching on Great Barrier Reef
UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND EurekAlert 11 Sep 17

Extensive loss of branching corals and changes in coral community structure in Australia's Palm Islands region over the past century has been revealed in a new study.

Dr Tara Clark of The University of Queensland Radiogenic Isotope Facility in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences said these corals were highly sensitive to environmental change.

She said the area in the central region of the Great Barrier Reef warranted close monitoring to avoid irreversible changes in ecosystem health.

"Hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is on a trajectory of decline," Dr Clark said.

"Yet, little is known about past coral mortality before long-term monitoring began around the 1980s to give us a long-term picture of what has happened since European colonisation of the coast."

Dr Clark said the limited baseline information of ecological dynamics before the 1980s made it difficult to understand recent ecosystem trends.

"Our study demonstrates the use of high-resolution uranium-thorium dating, modern and palaeoecological techniques to improve our understanding of coral mortality and recovery dynamics over much broader time scales," she said.

"At a regional scale we found a loss of resilience in ecologically important branching Acropora corals - formerly dominant key framework builders - with recovery severely lagging behind predictions."

Dr Clark said the study found the timing of Acropora coral death to have occurred simultaneously among reefs in the Palm Islands, coinciding with major disturbance events, such as bleaching and flooding, in the 1920s to 1960s and again in the 1980s to 1990s.

"Surveys conducted in 2014 revealed low Acropora cover - less than five per cent - across all sites, with very little evidence of recovery for up to 60 years at some sites, thus there was little left in this region for the 2016 bleaching event to kill." she said.

Together with previous research, the indication was the recent condition of the inshore Great Barrier Reef was a "shifted baseline" - already degraded before long-term monitoring took place. Taking together all such previous undocumented loss, the true picture is probably far worse than that depicted in previous reports of the 2016 mortality event.

This in turn strongly supported the importance of robust management action to reduce human impacts on reefs, especially efforts to reduce sediment and nutrient delivery to reef waters, in order to buy time for the reefs to recover before the next major disturbance event.

"The findings of this study will also prove valuable to reef managers by providing a reliable baseline for ongoing monitoring and identifying reefs at risk for deterioration, especially for those where modern observations are lacking," Dr Clark said.

School of Earth and Environmental Sciences project leader Professor Jian-xin Zhao said Dr Clark should be commended for her contributions to protect Australia's national icon, the Great Barrier Reef.

"Most of the work was done during her PhD studies or as part of a National Environmental Research Program project when she was a postdoctoral fellow," Professor Zhao said.

"This paper, together with two other papers published in Scientific Reports and Nature Communications in the past year, were published when Tara relied on casual administration and technical roles for a living, so this work is really an amazing achievement."

The study involved researchers from UQ's School of Biological Sciences,

###

Australian Institute of Marine Science, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) (doi:10.1073/pnas.1705351114).

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UK wind electricity cheaper than nuclear: data

Roland JACKSON AFP Yahoo News 12 Sep 17;

London (AFP) - The price of electricity from offshore wind in Britain has dipped below the level guaranteed to Hinkley Point, raising questions about the construction of the vast nuclear power station.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy disclosed Monday the results of auctions for state subsidies for three new wind offshore farms.

Denmark's DONG Energy won the auction to build Hornsea Two, which will become the world's biggest offshore wind farm off the coast of Yorkshire in northern England.

Germany's Innogy and Norway's Statkraft won the auction for Triton Knoll off Lincolnshire in eastern England, while Moray in Scotland was won by a consortium comprising EDP Renovaveis of Portugal and ENGIE of France.

"The projects, which are set to generate over three gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 3.6 million homes, demonstrate that the UK continues to be an attractive place to invest in clean energy," the department said in a statement.

The companies lodged bids for the so-called "strike price" they will be paid by the state for electricity generated, with the lowest amounts securing the deals.

Those prices have tumbled to £74.75 (82.36 euros, $98.52) per megawatt hour for projects deliverable in 2021/2022, and to £57.50 for projects due in 2022/2023.

- 'Nail in the coffin' -

The price of offshore wind has fallen far below that of nuclear, with the planned Hinkley Point C power plant in southwestern England having secured subsidies of £92.50 per megawatt hour.

The gigantic Hinkley project was awarded to a French-Chinese consortium -- led by French giant EDF -- last year but has been plagued by long delays and cost overruns.

"Today's results mean that both onshore and offshore wind are cheaper than gas and nuclear," noted trade body RenewableUK in a statement on Monday.

However, the Nuclear Industry Association cautioned in another statement that "one technology alone can't solve the UK's power challenge".

Wind and solar production have the drawback of being unpredictable, with countries needing to call on gas, coal or nuclear plants to raise output if there is no breeze or sun.

British government wind power subsidies have now halved since the last auction was held in 2015.

Environmentalists have long urged the government to focus on renewable sources like wind and solar power to meet Britain's energy needs.

Opponents have criticised the high guaranteed Hinkley price level, which is fixed over 35 years and rises with inflation.

Lawmaker Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party, said the massive price drop for offshore wind should be the "nail in the coffin" for new nuclear power.

"The government's undying commitment to new nuclear risks locking us into sky-high prices for years to come," Lucas warned.

- 'Big step forward' -

Meanwhile, Michael Ware, partner at BDO's corporate finance division, said Monday's announcement raised questions over the future of tidal and wave energy -- which are more costly.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the low price bids in the latest auction," Ware told AFP, describing it a "vindication" of government policy.

"However, it does beg the obvious question of where a £57.50 strike price leaves other nascent technologies, such as tidal and wave, which are probably not economically viable at that level.

"It also puts the (price) being paid for Hinkley Point into sharp perspective."

Nevertheless, Ware added it was "a big step forward in the transition to a renewable (energy) grid".

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Best of our wild blogs: 11 Sep 17

14 Oct (Sat): FREE workshop on Singapore Celebrates Our Shores 2018
wild shores of singapore

Moult of Blue-clawed Swimming Crab (Thalamita crenata) @ Coney Island (Pulau Serangoon)
Monday Morgue

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'Balloon run' to take place without balloons

Event organisers scrap idea over concerns that balloons will create litter, harm wildlife
Audrey Tan Straits Times 11 Sep 17;

Some air was taken out of a planned novelty "balloon run" - one where participants would hold on to balloons as they completed a course - after organisers scrapped a seemingly key component: balloons.

But the decision, which was made based on the potential impact those balloons might have had on the environment, did not appear to deflate the mood for the October event. Instead, the announcement on the event's Facebook page last week garnered positive responses.

Users thanked organisers for scrapping plans to distribute helium balloons, which they say could float away and end up as litter on Singapore's roads and waterways, and pose a risk to wildlife that may ingest the discarded material.

The Run for Good Balloon Run is organised by the Central Singapore Community Development Council (CDC) and the Kampong Glam Community Sports Club.

Balloons will still be used to decorate the event venue, and runners will learn how to craft simple balloon sculptures during the event.

But extra trash bins will be provided to ensure the balloons are disposed of properly, organisers told The Straits Times. "Volunteer marshals will also go around to help runners dispose their trash and ensure that the environment is kept clean," said a spokesman for the CDC.

The green initiatives were implemented after people took to the event's Facebook page earlier this month to express concerns about the possibility of balloons ending up as litter. Earlier publicity material had said that helium balloons would be distributed to participants running the 2km or 5km route in Lavender. Organisers have since decided to not give these out.

A CDC spokesman said balloons were chosen for the event as they bring people joy and make them smile. "We wanted an element of happiness while encouraging more people to Run for Good."

The event aims to get residents to run for a good cause. Participants pay $12 to take part, with proceeds going to Hope Centre and Peace Connect, which help vulnerable children, families and elderly people.

The CDC spokesman said it was aware of Singaporeans' concerns for the environment, and that it was happy to incorporate their feedback. But "we would also like to invite any concerned environment community group to, in future, approach us directly to discuss, share their concerns and knowledge".

Ms Ria Tan, an environmentalist who had called on organisers to reconsider distributing helium balloons, said she was glad that the CDC had scrapped plans for them after hearing about their harmful effects. Added Ms Tan, who runs wildlife site wildsingapore.com: "Hopefully, for their next mass event, they could consider more environmentally- friendly alternatives."

The CDC added: "We are constantly learning and looking at ways to improve how we run our programmes."

Related link
Help stop mass balloon event by CDC on 1 Oct (Sun) on wild shores of singapore

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A*STAR develops sensor platform for companies to test green building solutions

Rachel Phua Channel NewsAsia 10 Sep 17;

SINGAPORE: Singapore's research arm, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, or A*STAR, has developed a new platform for companies as testbed for green building products in a tropical climate.

The system, called the Intelligent Building Energy and Environmental Monitoring and Control System, or i-BEEMS, was co-developed by researchers from A*STAR’s Experimental Power Grid Centre (EPGC) and Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC).

The platform, which is currently housed at the EPGC on Jurong Island, works by tapping on a network of sensors that measures various atmospheric and energy-consuming elements to evaluate how effect a green building solution is.

It compares the building's performance figures without the product, and the new set of data when a building product is introduced.

i-BEEMS has close to 200 sensors placed around the EPGC building, and monitors the building’s elements in real time. Measurements are categorized under three groups: the building’s energy consumption, such as the amount of air-conditioning, utilities, and lighting different parts of the building is using; the indoor environmental quality, such as the amount of air pollutants and level of noise produced; the outdoor environmental conditions, such as the wind speed, amount of rainfall and visible light.

Besides observing how the product affects the building’s functions, the data collected is also transferred to a virtual model of the EPGC, where the researchers can test the product’s effectiveness in “many different scenarios which may not be measured on the field,” Dr Koh Wee Shing, a senior scientist at the IHPC, and one of the co-developers of the platform, told Channel NewsAsia during a visit to the centre.

Being housed at a facility with an experimental power grid also means that companies can test how their product reacts to any changes in electricity levels, said Mr Alex Chong, a senior manager at A*STAR's EPGC, and another co-developer of i-BEEMS.

He added that having i-BEEMS operating on a building at Jurong Island also means the product will be tested in “harsh weather conditions”, as it is close to chemical plants and shipyards that “filled the atmosphere with dirt”.

It also comes as Singapore is pushing for more environmentally-friendly building solutions. The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has set a national target of at least 80 per cent of all buildings in Singapore to be certified green by 2030. According to one report by the BCA, this means that the buildings must be “energy and water efficient, with a high quality and healthy indoor environment, integrated with green spaces and constructed from eco-friendly materials”.

"In general there's a push from different government agencies to green the buildings as well as to improve energy-efficiency,” Mr Chong said. “With all these initiatives, I think … there's some motivation for the companies to come up with new products and solutions that would allow building owners to address these concerns.”

He added that he was driven to create the platform as there are a “limited” number of sites for industry players to test out their solutions, which on the other hand, are aplenty in the market.

FIRST COMPANY TO USE IT

Mr Chong added he started developing the system – which cost “a few hundreds of thousands” of dollars to develop but has a “minimal” operational cost – in mid-2014. i-BEEMS hosted its first test-bedding project with commercial players in January this year, where it helped to test out a new type of glass panel solution developed by glass manufacturer AGC Group.

AGC group is testing how their double-glazed glass panel sets work in a tropical climate, as their products are usually created for use in temperate countries such as Japan, Mr Lim Yew Meng, AGC Asia Pacific’s executive director said.

The glass product that the company is testing at EPGC, the ATTOCH, has been installed in more than 200 projects in Japan since 2012, Mr Lim added, but it needed to test how well the glass panes work in a hot and humid climate first before “putting it on the market”.

"And it is a common practice in Singapore that the developer, the architect, the consultant, would prefer an independent third-party data report instead of our in-house report or data,” Mr Lim said.

AGC will be testing their product with i-BEEMS till the end of this year, but Mr Chong said that the research team is also currently in discussions with several other companies to test their products at the centre.

He added that he hopes to add a data analytics software to i-BEEMS so that it can help to interpret the data collected, and allow it to test 'smart' technologies and devices in the future.
Source: CNA/mn

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Malaysia: Need for uniform conservation laws for turtles

Nuradzimmah Daim New Straits Times 10 Sep 17;

THERE is a need to have uniform laws, as states enforce their regulations, including those on illegal trade, and the ban on turtle egg consumption.

Stringent laws, matched with increased effort in public education, may provide hope to the endangered species.

In its analysis and experience on the ground, World Wildlife Fund for Nature Malaysia (WWF Malaysia) showed that state laws governing turtles were inadequate and unable to protect turtles.

“There is no uniformity of laws on turtles in Malaysia, which creates loopholes in the enforcement of laws.

“In the peninsula, comprehensive banning of turtle egg possession and trade for all species has yet to be enacted, and thus, continues to be a huge problem for enforcement.

“Sabah and Sarawak have accorded protection to turtle eggs for all species for decades,” said WWF Malaysia’s Melaka Hawksbill Turtle conservation project team leader Lau Min Min recently.

She said the turtle trade mostly happened in Sabah, where turtles were poached from the waters and eggs were smuggled in from neighbouring countries.

In Sabah, turtles are a “Totally Protected Species” under the Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997 managed by the Sabah Wildlife Department. The high demand for turtle meat and shells in the international black market, compounded by the large areas of water surrounding Sabah, proved a challenge for surveillance, detection and enforcement, providing easy access to poachers.

“Due to the numerous cases of illegal retrieval documented in the past few years, enforcement agencies teamed up and established a state-wide turtle anti-smuggling task force in 2015 to increase enforcement in selected areas where poaching and trade regularly happened.

“WWF Malaysia provides technical support to the agencies and pushes for improved enforcement efforts,” Lau said.

The laws, she said, must also cover protection of beaches identified as turtle nesting sites through gazettement to prevent encroachment and deter poachers.

She said while Melaka’s beaches had the highest nesting population of the critically endangered hawksbill turtle, with 400 nests identified, none of them had been gazetted as turtle sanctuaries.

The nesting population of hawksbill turtles recorded from 2006 to 2015 in Melaka was stable, with approximately 400 nestings yearly.

“However, based on data recorded for Pulau Upeh, the turtle island of Melaka, the population has declined by more than 50 per cent in the last 10 years. Loss of habitat due to rapid coastal development continues to threaten the future of this species. Melaka is home to the second largest population of this species in Malaysia.

“In Terengganu, however, the population of hawksbill turtle has declined by more than 90 per cent compared with 20 years ago.”

Lau said the population of leatherbacks, one of the most iconic turtles in the world, had plummeted from more than 10,000 nestings in the 1950s to zero in the last six years, while the Olive Ridley turtle population in Malaysia had similarly recorded a drop of 99.9 per cent.

“Green turtles, on the other hand, showed positive changes, with more eggs being secured for incubation following intensified patrolling during the annual nesting season, and an increase of more than 40 per cent in nestings recorded in the last 25 years.”

In Sabah, the main turtle nesting population is in the Turtle Island Park in Sandakan, managed by Sabah Parks.

The three islands in the park are home to one of the largest populations of green and hawksbill females in Malaysia.

In recent years, based on Sabah Parks’ data, there has been a general increase in green turtle nestings and a decrease in hawksbill nestings.

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Malaysia: Leatherbacks return to Rantau Abang?

Zarina Abdullah New Straits Times 10 Sep 17;

DUNGUN: The return of a leatherback turtle at the Rhu Cikgu beach in Rantau Abang has got everyone excited.

As this is the first landing of the highly endangered species at the once popular leatherback nesting site since 2010.

The landing was discovered by a traditional turtle egg collector Hasang Husing (correct) while combing the beach at about 6am today.

Hasang said he was walking along the beach and saw turtle tracks leading to a site where he discovered a fresh nest but was not sure if it was from the leatherback turtle species.

“The track seemed to have been created by a big and heavy animal. I have not seen such tracks for a long time,” added Hasang who had been collecting turtle eggs for some 30 years.

He alerted the Fisheries Department about the nest and officers from the Rantau Abang Turtle sanctuary who arrived at the nesting site this morning confirmed that it was the nest of a leatherback turtle.

State Fisheries director Zawawi Ali said the leatherback had laid 93 eggs and the animal was expected to return to lay five more times between Sept 19 and 30.

“This is an exciting find as it proved that some of the leatherback turtle hatchlings released some 40 years ago have reached maturity and are returning to the same beach were it they were hatched.

He however cautioned that it is already late in the turtle nesting season.

“We will be monitoring the beach to ensure that the return of this leatherback is not disturbed,” he said adding that his man would be patrolling the beach and protect the nest from predators, including poachers.

Zawawi said the eggs had been retrieved and relocated to the incubating site nearer to the sanctuary and it should hatch in about 60 days.

“The same female is expected to lay some 450 eggs. This is truly exciting since we have not had this opportunity for so many years,” he added.

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Thailand: Phuket haze alert no cause for alarm, says disaster chief

Tanyaluk Sakoot The Phuket News 8 Sep 17;

PHUKET: A haze alert issued by the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Phuket Office (DDPM-Phuket ) today is no cause for alarm, DDPM-Phuket Chief Prapan Kanprasang has confirmed to The Phuket News.

Standard procedures have been in place since heavy haze from mass burn-offs on Sumatra, southwest of Phuket, in October 2015 blanketed Phuket with what officials confirmed was Phuket’s “worst haze ever”.

Flights were redirected and hospitals issued free masks as people were admitted for breathing difficulties.

“The alert was posted under an order issued by the Ministry of interior,” DDPM-Phuket Chief Prapan explained to The Phuket News.

“We knew this alert was coming. It only calls for DDPM officers to be prepared in case heavy haze affects areas across Southern Thailand,” he said.

The alert, issued and signed by Interior Minister Gen Anupong Paojinda, is dated Sept 4 and orders DDPM officials across Southern Thailand to be on alert for heavy haze.

The order specifically identifies the Andaman provinces of Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi, Rarong, Trang and Satun as areas where officers are to be ready for heavy haze.

It also calls for officers in the southern provinces of Surat Thani, Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Phatthalung, Songkhla, Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala to be on alert.

The order was issued following the national DDPM headquarters in Bangkok receiving a report confirming that 200 fire spots on Sumatra and on Borneo were ablaze and the ensuing smoke was causing haze.

Countries already affected by haze were Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, said the report.

Disaster officials in Thailand were already on alert throughout August and were ordered to remain on alert throughout September, noted the Ministry of Interior order.

Specifically, the order called for DDPM officials to respond to heavy haze by performing the following:

Inform people about haze situation in their areas and advise them on how to protect themselves from smoke inhalation.
Encourage people to not contribute to the problem by not burning off garbage at their homes and to encourage people to recycle their waste.

Contact the provincial public health offices and local administration offices to hand out masks to people.

Identify locations for temporary shelters where people susceptible to the effects of smoke inhalation will not be exposed to heavy haze. Arrange for local water truck services with high-pressure hoses to be able to be deployed to areas to reduce haze by spraying water.

Follow the standard situation management plan. If the situation becomes more severe, contact DDPM superior officers in Bangkok.

“Of course we will follow the actions as ordered in the alert,” Mr Prapan told The Phuket News.

“Being prepared is the only way to mitigate consequences in such situations,” he added.


Phuket haze worst ever: official
Saroj Kueprasertkij The Phuket News 7 Oct 17;

PHUKET: The air quality in Phuket today was the worst on record, the Regional Environmental Office 15 confirmed to The Phuket News this afternoon (Oct 7).

The day began with a hazy sunrise, with the PM10 reading, which records the level of particle dust and smoke in the air, rising to 170 at 8am. A good clear day would offer a reading of somewhere between zero and 50.

“But the afternoon was the worst. At 3pm, Phuket recorded a PM10 reading of 200,” said Dr Pornsri Suthanaruk, Director of Regional Environmental Office 15.

By sunset today, the Thai Pollution Control Department (PCD) officially reported an all-day PM10 high of 214 – so far, a new record.

However, the clouded skies and the PM10 readings was no real cause for alarm, Dr Pornsri stressed.

Despite, the elevated PM10 readings, Phuket today scored an Air-Quality Index (AQI) of only 141, which the PCD does not consider hazardous.

According to the PCD, any AQIs from 101-200 qualifies air quality only as “Affected”. For this category, the PCD notes: “People with breathing problems are to stay indoors. Young and elderly persons must not engage in strenuous physical activity outdoors. Any exercise should be done indoors.”

Regardless, the Phuket Provincial Health Office is continuing to hand out free basic face masks to children, the elderly and people with breathing conditions, such as asthma.

PPHO Deputy Director Dr Krit Sakulpat today re-confirmed that no patients had been admitted to any hospitals in Phuket for serious ailments brought on by the haze.

“We have asked all hospitals in Phuket to report the number of patients with respiratory problems to our office. So far, we have not received any reports, but we will keep a close eye on it as it might take up to three days for people to become seriously affected,” he said.

Meanwhile, the end-of-term break for all Thai curriculum schools has spared many educators the decision of what to do with hordes of children wanting to play outside.

“Only a few [Thai] schools are open for their summer courses or unfinished exams, but they are still not allowing students to spend extended periods outside the buildings or to play,” explained Somporn Chua-sakul Director of Phuket Educational Strategy Office.

“The director of every school has the right to close their own school if they believe the closure is necessary,” he added. “And to close a school for more than seven days requires permission from us.


Phuket haze health readings spiral, hospitals issue free masks

Tanyaluk Sakoot The Phuket News 6 Oct 17;

PHUKET: The Phuket Provincial Health Office (PPHO) has maintained its health warning from the Indonesian fire haze that has blanketed Phuket, but has confirmed that so far it has not received any reports of people being admitted to hospital for breathing difficulties.

The news follows the PPHO issuing an advisory on Sunday (Oct 4) urging children, the elderly and any persons with breathing difficulties to stay indoors. (See story here.)

The health warning was reiterated on Monday when air-quality readings reached critical levels (see story here) and today (see story here).

“We receive updates from the Pollution Control Department (PCD), Phuket Office, every day,” PPHO Director Dr Bancha Kakong told The Phuket News today (Oct 6).

“So far the PCD has reported that the levels of sulfur oxide in the haze from the fires has yet to reach dangerous levels here. We have not received any reports of people admitted to hospital for respiratory problems, and the situation is not serious enough to ask schools to close.”

In the meantime, however, government hospitals are handing out free face masks.

“As a precaution, children, the elderly and people with respiratory conditions can receive free Nexcare masks,” Dr Bancha said.

“Other people should not need masks, but we still urge all people to stay indoors and especially not to exercise outdoors at this time.

“If the situation changes, we will inform the public as soon as possible,” he said.

However, as of 6pm on Tuesday, after The Phuket News spoke with Dr Bancha, the Division of Air Quality Data, under the PCD’s Air Quality and Noise Management Bureau (aqmthai.com) reported that Phuket air-quality had deteriorated.

After recording a PM10 reading of 140 in the early hours of Tuesday, the air had cleared to safe reading 80 by early afternoon.

By nightfall, however, the haze blanketed the island and sent the PM10 spiralling back up to a categorically “Unhealthy” reading of 107. (See here.)

The “Unhealthy” range is described as “Everyone may begin to experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects.”

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Best of our wild blogs: 10 Sep 17

Night Walk At Old Upper Thomson Road ( 08 Sep 2017)
Beetles@SG BLOG

Upside Down Butterflies Part 2
Butterflies of Singapore

June 2018: International Seagrass Biology Workshop (ISBW) in Singapore!
teamseagrass

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Singapore faces more weather extremes as world warms

Experts' warning comes as weather events wreak havoc elsewhere
Audrey Tan Straits Times 10 Sep 17;

As with the rest of the world, Singapore, too, will face more extreme conditions as the world warms, experts told The Sunday Times as recent weather events continue to wreak havoc in the northern hemisphere.

Hurricane Irma, one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, is hurtling its way through the Caribbean and will reach the Florida coastline today, where 5.6 million people have been ordered out of Irma's path. But in its wake, the hurricane has devastated communities and left at least 21 dead.

It follows tropical cyclones that have ripped across other parts of the world, such as Texas in the United States, Hong Kong and Macau. Last month, Typhoon Hato triggered Hong Kong's most severe typhoon 10 warning, and left at least 16 dead.

Singapore remains relatively insulated from such storms due to its location on the equator. "Tropical cyclones are very rare in our equatorial region as their formation requires a rotational force, which is not present along the equator," said a spokesman for the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS).

But the island will not be spared extended dry spells and warm periods, as well as flash floods.

"The concerns for Singapore would be increased frequency of droughts and flash flooding, due to increased rainfall over the years," said Assistant Professor Winston Chow, a weather researcher at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) geography department.

MSS statistics show a trend of increasingly intense rainfall in Singapore. The annual maximum hourly rainfall was about 80mm in 1980. Last year, it rose to 90mm.

Last year was also Singapore's hottest year, with the annual mean temperature rising to 28.4 deg C. In 2015, 1998 and 1997 - the three other warmest years here - the annual mean temperature was 28.3 deg C, according to MSS.

"The urban heat island effect and, increasingly, anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change, both contribute to higher temperatures in Singapore," said Dr Benjamin Grandey, a research scientist from the Centre for Environmental Sensing and Modeling at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

The urban heat island effect refers to how city temperatures are higher than in rural areas, because of more heat released from buildings, roads and vehicles.

Dr Erik Velasco, an air quality scientist, said the changing characteristics of meteorological events happening around the world point to climate change. He said: "The warming effect of greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, agriculture and deforestation, in addition to the growing urbanisation and lack of mitigation measures in many places, are responsible for the catastrophic consequences of such weather events."

NUS' Prof Chow noted Singapore has taken steps to reduce the impact of flash floods, droughts and heat waves by improving drainage to reduce flood-prone areas, developing weather-proof technologies like desalination and Newater, and cooling the island by growing urban green spaces such as rooftop gardens.

To protect against rising sea levels, the minimum land reclamation level in Singapore was raised from 3m to 4m above the mean sea level.

Research is also being carried out to protect food supplies from the effects of extreme weather events.

Associate Professor Adam Switzer, academic associate chair at the Nanyang Technological University's Asian School of the Environment, said the impact of typhoons on rice yields is being studied to "better prepare the region for potential rice losses from typhoons, sea level rise and floods".

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Republic Polytechnic team finds way to ‘clean’ incineration ash

LOUISA TANG Today online 9 Sep 17;

SINGAPORE — Fly ash produced from burning garbage could soon be used to make concrete, reducing the amount of waste that will have to be dumped in landfills.

A research team from Republic Polytechnic (RP) has come up with a new nano-silica product that “cleans” incineration ash, building on a similar product created in Europe to deal with waste management. Silica is a common mineral found in many materials, such as sand.

Last year, an average of 250 tonnes of incineration fly ash (IFA) and 1,350 tonnes of incineration bottom ash (IBA) were generated a day in Singapore’s four incineration plants.

While both types of ash contain toxic heavy metals such as zinc and lead, IFA has higher concentrations of such metals, and they tend to “leach out more”, or escape from the ash, said research project principal investigator Dr Goh Chee Keong.

The amount of metals in the ash is not high enough to offset the cost of extracting them, he added.

Hence, to stabilise the heavy metals in the ash, the RP team mixes its nano-silica product with the ash. The silica nanoparticles then bind and trap the heavy metals — a process that is about 20 to 30 per cent more efficient than current methods, Dr Goh said.

By doing so, the metals will not leach out of structures that are made of concrete containing treated IFA, when it rains. Such leaching could result in the toxic metals contaminating rainwater that runs into the reservoirs, which poses a serious health risk.

Treated IFA is considered to be a greener alternative to sand and cement, which are traditionally used to make concrete. The cement manufacturing industry is one of the primary producers of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.

The four-man RP team, who completed their research in January after three years, tapped the National Environment Agency’s (NEA) Environment Technology Research Programme grant scheme for their project.

First launched in 2009, the scheme aims to help Singapore-based companies and researchers develop and commercialise advanced technologies for making better use of waste.

The team has filed for a patent for their nano-silica product, and is in talks with several firms to explore how they can use it in their industry operations.

In response to TODAY’s queries, the NEA said that the RP project has shown positive results.

However, since it is a lab research project, further study will be required to produce the product “on a commercial scale for it to be viable, and to develop and optimise an integrated continuous process for the chemical stabilisation of incineration ash, and to recycle the water to minimise its usage,” it added.

Apart from being a greener alternative, the RP team noted that using treated IFA to make concrete will reduce pressure on the Semakau Landfill — Singapore’s only landfill that is expected to be filled up by 2035 — where all incinerator ash and non-incinerable waste are currently disposed of.

Waste generation in Singapore has increased steadily from 7.67 million tonnes in 2015 to 7.81 tonnes last year, said the NEA.

Dr Goh said the treated incineration ash produced by his team is expected to comply with current European standards.

The NEA added that it is working on the development of environmental guidelines for the use of IBA in land reclamation and construction.

Treated IBA has been used successfully in trials for road pavement construction in Singapore, while a S$15 million recovery facility to salvage metals from IBA opened in Tuas in 2015.

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