Australia's rivers becoming as acidic as sulphuric acid in car batteries. Yikes.

Drought, obviously, is a nightmare. Some of the less obvious consequences can be the worst though- check this out.

"Scientists are warning that acid sulphate soils are turning river banks and billabongs into death traps for fish and birds and hazards for humans.

It is impossible for animals to survive NSW's Bottle Bend lagoon, which now has a pH -- or acidity -- level dropping as low as 1.8 -- equivalent to the sulphuric acid found in car batteries. And it is corrosive to the touch.

The waterway is just one of dozens of sites throughout South Australia, NSW and Victoria which falling water levels have turned into aquatic graveyards.

Paula D'Santos, project officer for the NSW Murray Wetlands Working Group, says the alarm was raised at Bottle Bend, upstream from Mildura, when the lagoon's pH fell from a healthy seven to a deadly three after it became cut off from the river's main flow. Fish died in their thousands, the banks were lined with toxic aluminium and manganese salts and the gnarled red gums on its banks began to die. "It is like a scene from the apocalypse. It's just incredible," Ms D'Santos says.

NSW's Tareena Billabong -- where acid-sulphate soils have also been found -- recently suffered a fish kill that left nine tonnes of fish rotting in the mud. The acid-sulphate problem -- caused by nutrient-rich submerged banks being exposed to air for the first time in decades -- is already rivalling salinity, overextraction and blue-green algae as threats to the river. "
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