We have been informed that Dr Turton has been suspended by the CSIR (see CSIR statement) prior to delivering an address entitled, “Three Strategic Water Quality Challenges that Decision-Makers Need to Know About and How the CSIR Should Respond”, which was intended to be delivered as the Keynote Address at “A Clean South Africa” CSIR “Science Real and Relevant” Conference on the 18 November 2008.
CSIR Silences and Suspends TOP Water Scientist - Environment South Africa - NEWS - FORUMS - ARTICLES - LEGISLATION:
DR. ANTHONY TURTON WAS SUSPENDED WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT FROM THE CSIR ON FRIDAY, THE 21ST OF NOVEMBER, 2008 AND HE HAS BEEN INSTRUCTED TO VACATE THE PREMISES. THE REASON FOR THE SUSPENSION WAS FOR ALLEGEDLY BRINGING THE CSIR INTO DISREPUTE THROUGH HIS WRITING AND FOR FAILING TO OBEY A LAWFUL INSTRUCTION.
This action comes just days after he was due to deliver his Keynote Address at a high profile conference but was not present at the conference and was more than likely prevented (or threatened) from attending the conference.
So much for our taxes at work !!! The CSIR is funded by public funds and Dr Turton's work was to reveal serious problems with Water in South Africa which clearly the current ANC regime do not want made public.
It is time for the public to stand up and ACT against this gross violation of Democratic and Constitutional Rights. Clearly the powers that be do NOT want you to know that you and your family are being slowly poisoned by greedy corporations and government officials.
Please go here to sign the petition against his suspension.
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I am unable to comment on environmental issues in SA let alone the intricacies of general politics and the sensitivities of water politics.
I live on the driest inhabited continent on earth which is going through its driest period since white settlement and since records have been kept. Now we have had some doozies of droughts before but nothing like this.
Our major water system is the Murray-Darling whose tributaries involve four states. We have abused that river. Water allocations to irrigators across the years have exceeded the amount of water that there was to give. We have a huge agricultural enterprise in Queensland up near the headwaters of the M-D system which has had huge earthmoving works undertaken on it. This has meant that huge amounts of water no longer spread out over a vast flood plain enabling farmers who are nowhere near the river channel to graze their sheep and cattle, etc. Consequently, there is less water flowing down into the Darling River (NSW), thence to the Murray (NSW-Vic-SA) and out into Lake Alexandrina. At the mouth of the Murray near Lake Alexandrina lies the Coorong. There is an Aussie movie of some years back - Storm Boy - which was filmed in the Coorong. The Coorong now is virtually dead, DEAD. It may never come back. The mouth of the Murray is silted up and there is talk of using sea-water to flush it out.
In my state of Victoria, which - because of its temperate climate - has been a virtual food bowl dependent on irrigation there is now serious discussion that resources will only be put into eastern Victoria. Small towns are dying and dead in Western Victoria.
Down on Bass Strait at Wonthaggi, the Victoria govt plans to build a huge desalination plant, Australia's first. Go to the website of Watershed Victoria for more on this. As well, visit Plug the Pipe where protests and arrests continue regarding the govt's north-south pipeline which involves renewal and upgrading of irrigation channels which will be more efficient and - in theory, at least - make available more water. The excess over what was available before will be fed into a reservoir for Melbourne's usage.
This is a fraction of the story in one state only.
Friends of mine in NSW are involved in the establishment of the Australian Water Network. They met with Maude Barlow (if you don't know Maude, please check her out - wonderful, influential bundle of energy) in Sydney after her visit to Melbourne for the Melbourne Writers Festival promoting her book, Blue Covenant. I spoke to her here.
So if your CSIR man has trodden on toes re water, it is unsurprising. Not unknown here - but perhaps not so severe. And I recall that in South Africa, your former president displayed some amazing deniability about AIDS, its causes and its alleviation. If that is possible, then environmental deniability is also possible.
And I hope that those who read this will become active, for the sake of humanity and in testimony of what our Creator intended in caring for this planet.
Blessings and bliss
Miss Eagle
One of the things Andrew Turton said at the SAFCEI conference earlier in the year was similar - that South Africa borrowed from one river to replenish another, but that we have reached the limit of what is possible in that way.
Also, that mining has caused many rivers to be polluted, and the cost of closing worked out mines safely was more than the cost of developing them in the first place.
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