What can be done about nutrient pollution?
If natural sources account for the major share of nutrient loads, as continuing research is now indicating, then the improvement of land management practices to prevent erosion is of critical importance to the control of nutrient pollution. It also means that reducing nutrients from other sources will have only limited impact on the overall problem. However, every reduction will help, and there are other good resource and environmental reasons for reducing human-induced contributions, especially in terms of more localised environments. For example, due to its old sewage treatment works, Cooma, with a population of some 8,000 people, was putting more phosphorus into the Murrumbidgee than was Canberra. This contributed to algal blooms in the River and the consequent need for emergency water supplies for Cooma in mid-1994. However, the problem has been reduced by 96 per cent through the addition to the treatment process of ferrous chloride (a waste material produced by BHP in its steel-ma
