Australia urgently needs a National Water Pollution Plan with clean water looming as the next crisis as a result of the catastrophic fires across the country, the Greens say.
\nGreens Spokesperson for Water Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said experts were already warning of the threat to drinking water.
\n\u201cThe unprecedented fires we are seeing across the country are putting Australia\u2019s clean water supply at risk. I\u2019m very worried clean drinking water is the next looming crisis,\u201d Senator Hanson-Young said.
\n\u201cAsh, debris and rotting carcasses are washing into our rivers and waterways causing pollution and contamination to our drinking water.
\n\u201cRivers and lakes are starved of oxygen from the pollution, impacting animals and plants that need the oxygen to survive, and leading to catastrophic events like the Menindee fish kill last summer.
\n\u201cWe urgently need a National Water Pollution Plan and the Prime Minister needs to tell us how he plans to keep our water clean.
\n\u201cWe are lucky you can turn on the tap here and drink the water from it, you know your kids are safe brushing their teeth with it \u2013 that is all at risk.
\n\u201cThe climate emergency has already pushed many parts of the country into drought and dried up water supplies to some regional towns.
\n\u201cOur environment and native species are facing an ecological disaster.
\n\u201cThe short and long term impacts from the fires on water cannot be ignored or delayed, or even more communities will suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia urgently needs a National Water Pollution Plan with clean water looming as the next crisis as a result of the catastrophic fires across the country, the Greens say. Greens Spokesperson for Water Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said experts were already warning of the threat to drinking water. \u201cThe unprecedented fires we are seeing across the … Continue reading “National Water Pollution Plan needed to protect clean water supply”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}