The frozen continent: Time to clean up the ice

By SIMON COLLINS

Scientists and their supporters are trying to clean up their act in Antarctica - and not a moment too soon.

For 100 years, people left their rubbish behind them on the frozen continent.

At least Ernest Shackleton's party left theirs in a tidy dump a few metres behind their hut at Cape Royds, where rusted cans and other detritus remain today.

But at Winter Quarters Bay outside the big US base at McMurdo Station, they used to simply tow their rubbish out on to the sea ice each year and wait for the ice to melt. Then the steel drums, used oil, old vehicles, batteries and other junk sank to the bottom of the bay.

"It's one of the most polluted harbours in the world in terms of oil," says Auckland University zoologist Clive Evans, who studies the fish in McMurdo Sound.

"If you drill a hole up towards McMurdo, the water that comes up is horribly grey and murky, and when it settles down, there is just a sheen of oil on the surface.

"New Zealand was to blame, too. We all were."

Today the ethos has changed completely. Now scientists in the field take so much care of the Antarctic environment that they even ship their own excrement home for disposal, in New Zealand's case to Christchurch and in the US case to Washington State.

The US, Australia, Japan and Germany are also leading a drive to tap renewable wind and solar energy to replace diesel fuels. Here New Zealand lags, but is under pressure to catch up.

Al Sutherland, the US National Science Foundation representative at McMurdo, says the US had stopped dumping its rubbish on the sea ice or burning it in the open by the time he arrived in 1989.

But human waste from both McMurdo and New Zealand's Scott Base was poured into the sea until very recently. Both bases have built sewage treatment systems only in the past year.

A 265-page Ross Sea State of the Environment Report issued by Antarctica NZ in 2001 found that "most of the Ross Sea region environment is in a pristine state, exceptionally so by global standards".

The simple explanation is that people are still rarely seen in the vast bulk of Antarctica.

But the report added: "The most significant environmental impacts of science activities are localised, largely around the permanent research stations ...

"Contamination of the marine environment, in particular at Winter Quarters Bay off McMurdo Station, disturbance to wildlife and ice-free areas, including plants and invertebrate fauna, has occurred in the vicinity of these sites, and many of the impacts are ongoing."

The report lists leaks and spills which released 74,000 litres of fuel into the environment around McMurdo and Scott Base during the 1990s. This was only 0.04 per cent of the total fuel handled, but seems to be an inevitable side-effect of using fuel for transport, cooking, heat and light.

Direct spills were dwarfed by 340,000 litres of chopped up, but otherwise untreated, sewage and wastewater that were discharged every day in summer by McMurdo and Scott Base combined until last year.

Although there is hardly any wildlife on the ice, scientists have intensively studied what there is.

At Cape Royds this summer, US scientist David Ainley has put a fence around a group of nesting Adelie penguins, forcing them to walk over a weighbridge to get in or out.

Another American, Paul Ponganis, has caught 13 emperor penguins and put them in a fenced "corral" so that he can to observe the way they dive and swim.

Penguins, seals and toothfish are caught and tagged, often these days with electronic monitoring devices.

The report says that after dumping on the sea ice stopped, solid waste from the research stations was incinerated until 1994 at McMurdo and until 1999 at Scott Base. Since then, solid wastes have been sent back where they came from.

"The ship goes back about two-thirds full," Mr Sutherland says.

McMurdo has built recycling bins for paper, glass, metal, plastics and organic waste, achieving a recycling rate of almost 50 per cent of all solid wastes. Bins are less obvious apart from those for food wastes at Scott Base, where most non-food recyclables are collected together.

In the field, solar energy panels were prominent at the two US research camps the Herald visited in November. None were visible at New Zealand camps, although Scott Base manager Julian Tangaere said they existed at several more remote huts. Scott Base itself does not make use of renewable energy, heat recovery or efficient lighting.

McMurdo installed small solar and wind power systems in 1995, although both still provide less than 1 per cent of its total electricity use. It has high efficiency lighting and uses waste heat from electronic equipment as the main heat source in four communications buildings.

"Our largest field station, at Black Island, is primarily on wind and solar. Its entire communications facility is run with that," Mr Sutherland said.

Australia is spending A$6.4 million ($7.3 million) on wind turbines at its Mawson Station to generate 80 per cent of the station's electricity, reducing the need to bring in fuel to just twice a decade. Wind already provides 6 per cent of the electricity at Germany's Neumayer Station. At Japan's Syowa Station, wind provides 1.8 per cent and solar power 3 per cent.

Antarctica NZ has hired Canterbury University engineer Pat Bodger to assess energy efficiency and renewable options, and Mr Tangaere sees hydrogen fuel cells as eventually offering "a perfect solution". "But the price would have to come down," he says. "The diesel electric generator is still comparatively cheap."

* TOMORROW: Global warming - Antarctica's future.