Barrier Reef Waters Still Loaded With Farm Pollutants

Water on the Great Barrier Reef is still loaded with harmful farm pollutants and sediment despite efforts to fix it, a report card shows. The new assessment, released by the federal and Queensland governments, comes as Australia fights to keep the reef off the list of World Heritage sites in danger. There’s little in the latest report card that will make the job any easier, coming on the back of the latest mass coral bleaching event—the reef’s fifth in the past eight summers. The report says there’s been very poor and poor progress on two key water quality threats driven by agriculture: dissolved inorganic nitrogen from fertiliser use, and sediment loads....