Australia floods cause possibly years of damage

Flooded Australians return to mud and mess
BRISBANE, Australia — Residents of waterlogged northeast Australia returned to homes caked in sludge and nervously watched the skies for more rain Friday while waiting for swollen rivers to recede. The worst appeared to have passed from Flooding that covered an area the size of France and Germany in murky brown water for longer than a week, but torrents still posed dangers in partly-submerged towns in Queensland state and progress on assessing damage and rebuilding was slow. On Frida...

Australians Watch, And Wait, For Flooding To Recede
The worst Flooding to hit Australia in a half-century appeared to have peaked in the country's northeast on Wednesday, but residents of one coastal city were warned that it may be weeks before the waters recede. The mayor of Rockhampton, the last major town inundated by the slow-moving flood in Queensland state, said the city appeared to have been spared any further damage as the chocolate-brown floodwaters were holding below their predicted peak. The Fitzroy River, which flows through Rockhampt...

Australia floods cause 'catastrophic' damage
Australia's record floods are causing catastrophic damage to infrastructure in the state of Queensland and have forced 75 percent of its Coal Mines — which fuel Asia's steel mills — to grind to a halt, Queensland's premier said Wednesday. The worst Flooding in decades has affected an area the size of Germany and France, left towns virtual islands in a muddy inland sea, devastated crops, cut major rail and road links to coal ports, slashed exports and forced up world coal prices. Ar...

Australia floods: new storms hit flood region
Heavy rains fell in eastern Australia on Thursday, bringing fresh misery to flood-hit communities as the mayor of the flooded city of Rockhampton warned it could take up to a year to recover from the worst Flooding in decades....

Snakes Join Flood-Hit Australians in Search for Dry Land
In the past two weeks, the worst Flooding in Queensland's recent history has taken 10 lives, inundated 40 communities, caused an estimated $9 billion loss to export revenue and cost the country at least $5 billion in damages. And as the rain slows down today in some areas, residents of flood-stricken zones find themselves with yet another predicament: they are not the only ones scrambling to get on dry land. In Rockhampton, a town of 77,000 on the Queensland coast, crocodiles, brown snakes an...

Floods threaten more Australian towns
ST. GEORGE, Australia, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- Another town in Queensland braced for floods Friday with more rain expected in the ravaged Australian state. In St. George, the Balonne River is forecast to crest Saturday above the record of 44 feet set last year, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. About 30 homes are expected to be swamped, and thousands of sandbags are being filled. "I think it's reliving my time in Venice with the water just lapping outside our house and all we need now is a gon...

Sarkozy visits Martinique, Guadeloupe
BASSE-TERRE, Guadeloupe, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy landed in Martinique late Friday, beginning a flying visit to two of his country's overseas departments. Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, will move on to Guadeloupe Saturday, Radio France Internationale reported. The president is scheduled to give New Year's greetings Sunday to the 2.5 million people in the overseas departments. President Barack Obama is to host the Sarkozys next week in Washington. The visit is Sarkozy'...

Australia: Reptiles roam free as Queensland's flooding reaches highest levels yet, global seaborne coal market down 40 percent
© Unknown An aerial view of partially submerged houses in flooded Theodore in Australia' s state of Queensland They have already been described as being of "Biblical proportions" but last night the Australian city of Rockhampton was bracing itself for even worse as flood waters were expected to reach their highest levels. In the growing crisis Military Aircraft were rushing to get supplies to residents, to whom there is now only one land access route left. Police were desperately urging...

Secession is an Option
Posted by JM Ashby Oil and Coal company representatives with their "black oil hearts," as The Governator would put it, are none too happy about the upcoming Regulation of green house gases by the EPA and the more attentive enforcement of the Clean Water Act. One State Representative in Kentucky is taking things a step further and is now letting his constituents know that Secession is on the table. "Secession is an option," Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, who has long been the Democrat’s top gu...

NIOSH offers to replace troubled mine breathing units to faciliate investigation of CSE SCSRs
Just before the New Year’s holiday, government Regulators quietly issued another update on the ongoing investigation of problems with the most widely used self-contained, self-rescuer devices in the nation’s Coal Industry. The update from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration Probe is posted here, and this is the key new information: On October 4, 2010, NIOSH and MSHA began collecting SR-100s from this list acco...

Dirty Business film debunks 'clean coal' myth | Felicity Carus
Dirty Business, the new documentary from the Centre for Investigative Journalism, began its nationwide screening tour last night in Berkeley, California, with the aim of debunking the myth of "Clean Coal" and kick-starting a debate on the future of energy in the US. The film shows scarred mountains, abandoned family homes on remote hillsides, water courses toxic with sludge, respiratory fatalities and Children whose growth has been stunted by Pollution as some of the side effects of coal extract...

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report: January 6, 2011 (Audio)
TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport. The 'GNR' is also now available on your cell phone via Stitcher Radio's mobile app!. IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The new masters of the House: Cow farts and "Oversight"; Fox News fights non-existent incandescent light bulb ban; Just three words sum up the BP Oil Spill: "failure of management" ... PLUS: It's the Aflockalypse Now?! The birds, the bees, and the fish .... All that and more in today's Green News Report! Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)... Link: E...

Colorado Coal Industry Representatives Plan To Increase Lobbying After Tough Year
The Steamboat Pilot: Steamboat Springs -- Stuart Sanderson said Wednesday that coal representatives, to an extent, could have themselves to blame for impacts from Legislation adopted last year that has coal and mining industries in an uproar. Read the whole story: The Steamboat Pilot Get HuffPost Denver On Twitter and Facebook! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

Mountaintop removal litigation update
I was tied up with some other matters, so this morning we went with the AP version of the story about the latest Lawsuit over Coal Mining selenium Pollution: Three environmental groups have filed a federal Lawsuit accusing a West Virginia surface mine operator of illegally allowing excess selenium to pollute a pair of creeks. The Sierra Club, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and West Virginia Highlands Conservancy filed the Lawsuit in Federal Court in Huntington on Tuesday. They claim Maple...

Friday roundup, Jan. 7, 2011
Homeless people warm themselves near burning coal on a cold morning in Jammu, India, Sunday, Jan. 2, 2011. Beggars and impoverished Migrant Workers often sleep in the open, with only plastic sheets or jute cloth sacks for cover. Severe cold has killed about six homeless people in northern India so far, according to news reports. (AP Photo/Channi Anand) As the Republicans take control this week in the U.S. House of Representatives, even some Democrats — like West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockfel...

Countdown: Julian Assanges Memoir Will Be Out This April
April 11: That’s the day that Wikileaks front man Julian Assange ’s memoir will be unleashed onto the public. Assange previously said he’s writing the book not because he wants to, but because he needs the money to pay for his mounting legal costs and to keep Wikileaks up and running. And, with $1.5 million coming his way, he may be able to do just that. In addition to the U.S. and the U.K, Assange’s book will likely also be published in Italy, Germany, France, Australia...

Summer Down Under
By John Ballard Australia is now in the middle of Summer. Americans tend to forget (if they ever knew) that the seasons are reversed in the Southern hemisphere. And those flood scenes from Australia are nothing like the Flooding being shown for places in the US. The Australian floods cover an area bigger than Texas.  And the consequences of Australia's floods have global implications. About fifty-nine percent of seaborne metallurgical coal comes from Queensland, bound for steelmakers...

Floods and storms kill 39 in rural South Africa
JOHANNESBURG - South African authorities say at least 39 people have died in Flooding and thunderstorms in the eastern part of the country. Provincial disaster management confirmed Friday that 26 people, including 4 Children, have died as a result of adverse weather conditions in the rural Eastern Cape province since mid-December. In neighboring KwaZulu-Natal province, police say six people drowned as a result of Flooding last week, in addition to seven people killed in a Lightning Strike ...

Floods and storms kill 39 in rural South Africa
JOHANNESBURG — South African authorities say at least 39 people have died in Flooding and thunderstorms in the eastern part of the country. Provincial disaster management confirmed Friday that 26 people, including 4 Children, have died as a result of adverse weather conditions in the rural Eastern Cape province since mid-December. In neighboring KwaZulu-Natal province, police say six people drowned as a result of Flooding last week, in addition to seven people killed in a lightning s...

New storms soak flood-weary Australian communities
BRISBANE, Australia - Cleanup crews toiled under more pounding rains Thursday to clear mountains of debris in flood-ravaged communities across northeastern Australia, as one mayor warned it could take his city up to a year to recover from the worst Flooding in decades. Officials were only beginning to see the scope of the damage as river levels across Queensland state started dropping despite new thunderstorms. Floodwaters were expected to stay high in many areas for at least another week,...

Heavy rains hit Australia's flood-drenched northeast
Heavy rains threatened further Flooding in Australia's drenched northeast Thursday as besieged Rockhampton cut supplies to "irresponsible" residents who refused to leave water-bound homes. Torrential downpours could cause flash-flooding and worsen existing floods, the weather bureau said, as water levels slowly started to recede in regional centre Rockhampton, a town virtually surrounded by a brown inland sea. Australia's coal-mining and farming belt near Brisbane is suffering "biblical" floods ...

Cayman Islans sinking US ship to create reef
KINGSTON, Jamaica - Contractors began Flooding a decommissioned U.S. Navy ship Wednesday to sink it in the clear waters off the Cayman Islands, where officials hope the vessel will attract tourists and fish. Plans called for the USS Kittiwake, a 1945-vintage Submarine rescue ship, to rest on a sandy bottom off Grand Cayman's Seven Mile Beach. The 47-foot-tall (14-meter) ship will be at a depth of 62 feet (19 meters), so the top deck should be close to the Caribbean Sea's surface, making it...

Residents of flooded Australian city face long recovery
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Floodwaters in an inundated city on Australia's coast held steady below their predicted peak on Wednesday, as exhausted residents were warned they would face a long wait before the churning, muddy mess dries up. Residents of the waterlogged city of Rockhampton were hopeful the river had swelled to its highest level, with the mayor saying the community appeared to have been spared any further damage. Water from the overflowing Fitzroy River has already swamped 20...

Flooded Queensland gets more heavy rain
BRISBANE, Australia, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Heavy Rain fell in Australia's flooded Queensland state Thursday and officials said it could take a year for ravaged towns to recover. Once again, more rain was forecast. Water levels in the worst Flooding in a half century were expected to stay high in many areas for at least one more week, with forecasters predicting Flash Floods in communities this weekend where hundreds of homes are already underwater. At least 10 people have died in weather-related incid...

Reason Morning Links: New Congress Takes Over, Flooding in Australia, Sudan May Split
New Congress begins today. Australia hit with massive Flooding. Vote this week may split Sudan in two. Navy captain dismissed over lewd videos. Boehner promises GOP house will be honest and accountable. Freshman GOP congressman reportedly already facing ethics investigation. ...