Water is a precious commodity in Siem Reap, Cambodia

Cambodia's Angkor Wat has almost 2 million visitors a year. The visitors, many of whom stay in 5-star accommodation in the nearby city of Siem Reap, are putting increasing pressure on the scarce water resource.

The plush tourist resorts with fairways of lawns soak up the area's valuable water supply and are in stark contrast to the homes and the lives of the locals of Siem Reap.

Water is a precious commodity in Siem Reap, particularly during the dry season, when tourist numbers are highest. And the population of the city, barely five kilometres from Angkor Wat, has doubled in a little more than a decade to about 200,000.

Water is sucked from groundwater under the city of Siem Reap and as a consequence the stability of Angkor Wat, a centuries-old World Heritage-listed landmark, is under threat.

Local authorities have expressed concerns that thousands of illegal private pumps have been sunk across the city, pulling millions of litres of water from the ground each day.

However, the very survival of the local community is dependent upon a clean and reliable water supply.

Locals living in Siem Reap's hinterland include thousands who are lake dwellers - they live permanently in building along the banks of the lake of Tonle Sap or on the lake itself. For them, clean fresh water is a major problem. Communal pumps, where they are available, are often some distance from the homes.

On a recent visit to Cambodia this writer did not stay in 5-star accommodation.

Credit: SMH

Tony Windsor takes a dangerous tack in water debate

From A Clarence Valley Protest on 14 October 2010:

Tony Windsor demonstrates a dangerous parochialism in water debate

Federal Independent MP for New England Tony Windsor has apparently threatened to push for alternatives to mass water buybacks, including redirecting water into the struggling Murray according to The Australian today.

Mr Windsor said that if the Murray-Darling Basin Authority was going to use climate change as part of its justification to take 3000-4000 gigalitres of water from irrigators, it could look at diverting water into the basin from areas of higher rainfall elsewhere...........
Mr Windsor said he would conduct an objective valley-by-valley analysis of where the authority's recommended cuts to water allocation could be tolerated. He said that where the risk of a significant socio-economic fallout was high, "there may be other strategies to fixing this not identified by the authority". He said "the political process" would examine these and other issues in the coming months.
Mr Windsor said the MDBA should not allow water to be taken away from irrigators on account of climate change, because they were not responsible for the problem.

Mr. Windsor does not elaborate on where any potential water diversion would originate except to vaguely point in the direction of far north Queensland.

However, as the Clarence River began to be mentioned within days of the release of the Murray Darling Basin Authority's draft basin plan, on has to suspect that the fate of this NSW coastal river is once more being discussed by politicians and interested parties who are still unwilling or unable to understand that wrecking one catchment area to apply what is little more than a band-aid to the Murray-Darling catchment is not an environmentally or economically sustainable response.

The fact that the Gillard Government is so determined to cling to power that Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities Tony Burke could state: "I am certainly not going to reject it,"....."If Tony Windsor has ideas like that, then we'll talk them through" should be of concern to Clarence Valley communities.

“I stand by my community, not one drop goes from the Clarence”: Janelle Saffin, MP for Page

The Daily Examiner continues to warn Clarence Valley residents of the ongoing debate concerning damming and diverting fresh water from the Clarence River catchment in its 13 October 2010 article Clarence diversion not on agenda.

Thankfully, Federal Labor MP for Page Janelle Saffin continues to stand firm on the issue and support the Clarence community's opposition to any water raid.

Oi, Tony! Whatever happened to "No comment until I have appropriate details."

Tony Windsor is turning out to be a very ordinary pollie.
After telling us all he wouldn't comment until he had all the details on legislation, policy or proposals, he's one of the first out the gate talking up water diversion into the Murray-Darling from other regions so that his constituents can fly in the face of the Basin Plan and continue their collective grossly unsustainable use of river and ground water in the face of the Basin Plan proposed guidelines.
No-one in the Northern Rivers is fooled by his clumsy artifice in this hypothetical query; "is it possible to repatriate that water to neutralise the effect of climate change in the Murray-Darling system by bringing water in?"
We all know bl**dy well which river his home ground voters will be opting for - our coastal Clarence River.
The same river which is salt for much of its course to the sea and you can walk across in dry times up where the fresh water flows.
A bloke doesn't have to look to undeveloped countries to find people willing to rape healthy rivers - all he has to do these days is look over the Great Dividing Range!

Another Yamba 'local' sports star hits the big time

In keeping with the long-established tradition local media has of playing the 'local' ace card any time anyone who can be tracked via a long distance connection to the local area (even if, for example, it has to be via a second cousin five times removed) this blog is only too happy to claim the boyfriend of Donna Urquhart, who won a bronze medal in squash at the Delhi Games, as a 'local'.

Urquhart's boyfriend, Van Humphries, has been named in the 36-man Wallabies squad for their tour of Hong Kong and Europe.

Unfortunately, another local, young Kane Douglas, who has rocketed to prominence in Australian rugby and has just completed what can only be described as a hell-of-a-ride in 2010, didn't make the cut and isn't in the touring squad. Douglas, who popped up this year via Sydney's Southern Districts, first appeared on the Waratahs' bench but soon became a fixture in their run-on side.

Yamba's Cameron Pilley wins gold in Delhi

Yamba's Cameron Pilley and Taree's Kasey Brown have won gold in the mixed doubles squash competition at the Delhi Comonwealth Games. Pilley and Brown downed Kiwis Joelle King and Martin Knight 8-11, 11-7, 11-5.

The Age reported:  
The Australians appeared in trouble during an attritional opening game that went the way of the New Zealanders, but their superior agility and court movement eventually turned momentum their way. Pilley and Brown, both of whom had won bronze in earlier matches yesterday, clawed back from 3-0 down to win the second game, and breezed through the final game 11-5 to complete a forgettable afternoon for New Zealand in Delhi.

''We both played two matches today and we didn't lose,'' Pilley said. ''That's all we can do.''

Added Brown: ''It's very tiring. Your arm gets pretty sore. I think I've hit about a million forehands over the last four days. You get stiff, but I think doubles is more of a mental game … Physically it's different to singles.''

 Victory to Pilley and Brown may have bolstered Australia's lead atop the gold medal standings, but the team is on track to record its worst haul at the Commonwealth Games in 20 years. Australian teams have claimed in excess of 80 gold medals in each of their past four campaigns and, with just one day of competition remaining, they are guaranteed to fall short of that standard.

 Earlier, Brown and Donna Urquhart (also of Yamba) won bronze in an all-Australian third-place women's doubles play-off against Lisa Camilleri and Amelia Pittock. Pilley and Ryan Cuskelly also claimed bronze in the men's doubles over Scotland.

I've been filtered? Oh, that hurts!

Around the time Communications Minister Stephen Conroy began to tell Australia that the big ISPs were voluntarily filtering out net nasties I discovered I could no longer bring up a number of websites on the Internet at home, including the news aggregate site Kwoff.
Similarly The Political Sword was off the home viewing menu.
I did not connect these events and went hunting through my PC looking for what turned out to be a non-existent bug.
Because when I eventually changed my ISP to take advantage of better rates (leaving all my original operating and security systems intact) I suddenly found that all those sites which had been bringing up error and connection problem notices (and the odd verboten!) were once more accessible.
So what has been going on up in Dodo Land that innocuous web addresses are on some sort of voluntary black list?

Not A Paedo
Grafton