Clean Energy Future Package
World Congress of Soil Science Delegates Visit West Bryon
Soil Scientists Tour the 'Volcano Coast'
Visitors to the 19th World Congress of Soil Science held in Brisbane in late July spent some time in northern NSW looking at a number of sites, including the West Byron Integrated Water Management Reserve (the West Byron Wetlands). The field trip was organised by the NSW Department of Industry and Investment, and highly regarded Australian soils scientist David Morand was the field tour leader. Water and Carbon Group design team leader David Pont provided the group with a history and functional understanding of the famous West Byron site.
It quickly became clear why these scientists are regarded as some of the top people in the field, as they displayed not only a lively interest in every facet of the systems they inspected, but usually got "up close and personal" with the soils, with a lot of spirited discussion and debate about classification and soil origins.
Wetlands tour
At West Byron the group received an operational perspective and initial understanding of the effluent management system by Byron Council's Recycling and Environmental Systems Coordinator Bryan Green. David Pont then gave the group of about 20 international and Australian scientists a concise history of the project, including the problems faced by the Byron community in finding a solution to the town's wastewater management issue.
David talked about the achievement of the large group of local people who put together all the elements of the project including political, financial, ecological, regulatory, and engineering aspects. He listed and discussed the water chemistry results of the system in treating the wastewater. It is apparent that this wastewater management system is one of the best performing in the world today.
Soils around Byron
David also described the critical influence of soil types of the area on the West Byron project. He pointed out the variation in soil types in the local area, from the ancient Pleistocene sands (Podsols) of the beach ridges on which the West Byron system is situated, through the metasediment and metamorphic rocks of Cape Byron, the basalt-derived red soils of the surrounding hills (ferrosols), and the acid sulfate alluvials of the low-lying valley below West Byron (Hydrosols), to the peats (Sapric Organsosols) of the 24 hectare effluent reuse trial site.
David Morand extracted a core from the peat using a "gouge auger", and described the chemistry of the substrate. The group again discussed the classification of these types of soils and how their profiles should be described. David Pont talked about the long term history of the site and particularly the peat development over the last 6,000 years. Based on the forensic work of Drs. K. Taffs and J. Parr using pollen, diatoms and plant phytoliths, the peat is composed of plants present on the site today. The soil scientists were able to relate the peat soil to the living plants at their feet.
The Russian perspective
A final note was provided by Russian Professor Nikolai Vitlov who told David in halting English that "it is incredibly difficult to achieve progress in large projects where the issues around the natural environment must be integrated with society. What your community has achieved here is brilliant".