Tsunami still taking toll on environment

Raw sewage dumped in ocean
But the city’s sewage treatment plant still isn’t working, forcing it to dump untreated waste into the ocean.

Nearly 50 tons of expired medications — some of it donated after the tsunami — sit in a warehouse awaiting safe disposal, and there are at least 32 unregulated dump sites containing leaky oil drums, medical waste and asbestos-laced roof tops.

Sigli is typical of coastal towns along Indonesia’s battered coast. Its small dump is now half a mile long.

“Every day, the trucks come,” said Siti Zakiah, whose house now borders the site. “I have a baby and this dump concerns me. ... I can’t open my doors and windows because of the flies.”

In the Maldives, salt and waste from septic tanks have contaminated groundwater, while tainted debris is scattered across the archipelago. “It is a serious challenge,” said Donna Chanda, head of the Canadian Red Cross delegation that is running a $10 million waste management program.

The government wants more international help. Waste disposal has always been a problem on the small, low-lying islands, says Mohamed Hussain Shareef, a government spokesman, but now it’s hampering reconstruction.

Human wave a bigger impact
Not all the news is bad.

Mangroves emerged largely unscathed, and in Indonesia and Thailand less than 20 percent of reefs were damaged, mostly by debris that washed offshore, officials said.

Many farm fields swamped by seawater have recovered, and some farmers in Indonesia are reporting increased rice, peanut and vegetable crop yields.

But if coastal ecosystems came out relatively unscathed, it’s chiefly because they were already so badly denuded by human activity that little was left for the waves to destroy.

“In general, the impact of the tsunami is a lot less than the human impact,” said Clive Wilkinson, of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who is preparing a report on the tsunami-hit reefs.

One quarter of all mangroves in Asia have been destroyed by human activity, while dynamite fishing has decimated many coral reefs. Now the fear is that illegal logging and overfishing, long the bane of the region’s environment, will intensify. The United Nations says fish stocks could face collapse because donors are promising many more boats than existed before the disaster and are offering to industrialize what had been mostly a subsistence business.

“The media gets terribly excited about storms, tsunamis and oil spills where in fact the slow, chronic stuff is more damaging — overfishing, sediment flows and development,” Wilkinson said.

Jerker Tamelander, a Sri Lanka-based World Conservation Union worker, says so much rebuilding is bound to have a serious environmental effect.

“The actual implications of that,” he warns, “will last for decades.”

MORE FROM ENVIRONMENT

Environment Section Front

Judge asked to end Yellowstone bison kills Cavern could collapse, taking part of city West Africa's giraffes escape extinction EarthTalk Q&A: wind aesthetics, green travel   Creek a poster child for Chesapeake Bay Newsweek: India seeks green super power status Fertilizer, exhaust tied to alpine lake pollution Legally binding climate treaty less likely Democrats advance contentious climate bill California OKs $11 billion for water overhaul Environment Section Front   Add Environment headlines to your news reader: