A year ago I criticised the Queensland Government for not telling us how much water would be delivered by the then newly released infrastructure plan and the proposed $2.3 billion budget allocation [click here for that bog post].
A lot has happened over the last year. Government has changed its plan and yesterday the Premier provided estimates in terms of how much water the new options will deliver at the same time announcing that two new dams will definately be built, the Traveston and Wyalarong Dams.
Here are some extracts from one of the media releases:
"The new water projects for the Logan/Albert River and Mary River will be essential to fill the future gap of water supply need in south east Queensland, Premier Peter Beattie said today.
Mr Beattie said the current estimated water supply capacity in south east Queensland was 450,000 megalitres a year.
“Our goal is to reduce demand through water efficiency measures such as fixing leaky council pipes, reducing water pressure, and encouraging changes in consumption by homes, business and industry,” Mr Beattie said.
“However, even if we meet these water saving targets we expect our water use to grow to 750,000 megalitres a year by 2050.
“Therefore we need to fill the gap of approximately 300,000 megalitres.
“We expect investigations on desalination and our work on industrial recycling will deliver 110,000 megalitres per annum
“However these projects alone will not be enough.
“We need to build new water storages to meet the capacity needs of another 190,000 megalitres per annum.”
Mr Beattie said the four new water initiatives on the Logan/Albert River were expected to deliver an extra 42,000 megalitres into the system by the end of 2011.
He said the three stage process for the Traveston Dam would deliver up to an extra 150,000 megalitres per annum. The first stage of Traveston will deliver up to 70,000 megalitres per annum, the raising of Borumba Dam an extra 40,000 megalitres per annum and the completion of Traveston, if required, an extra 40,000 megalitres per annum.
“Dams are able to provide relatively large volumes of reliable water supplies in an economical way,” Mr Beattie said
“It is true that climate change has affected the reliability of rainfall to supply dams, however, that is why we are developing a water grid to connect our water storages throughout south east Queensland."
“We can share supply between the dams and other water storages through an inter-connected set of pipelines and transfer mechanisms.
“That way if it rains in one part of the region but not in another we can move water around the region to meet demand in the highest areas of need."
Now that's interesting. Is the Premier suggesting that climate change is not now anticipated to affect the overall amount of water falling in south eastern Queensland, just how its distributed?
It is now proposed that the dam for the Logan/Albert River be built at Wyalarong. Following is a rainfall record for parts of this catchment put together about a year ago by Warwick Hughes.
Not so many years ago a dam was to be built in central Queensland on the Fitzroy River. It was to be called the Nathan Dam. Construction was blocked when an action was taken by conservation groups in the federal court under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. It will be interesting to see whether or not the same fate befalls the proposed new dams for south eastern Queensland?
i think the whole system is bull shit why would the government need to build more dams when there is no rain to fill them up.. why dont they tke a leaf out of perths book and build A TREAtment place where the water also th recylced more water would get around.. there is the also the idea of getting a iceberg and importing it to the dams to provide water.. think about that one Peter Beattie
Ian, The new Queensland dams may well pay for themselves in the next big flood as we seem to have built houses and other infrastructure on just about every flood plain we can find on the east coast of Australia. When I travel north to the gold coast and Brisbane there are new houses everywhere at .25 to .5 million each and uninsurable, only need to save a few thousand from flood to pay for the dams. Perhaps this is the real agenda ?, despite the current dry, climate change may well deliver bigger floods, combined with a bit of sea level rise I suspect our "sea change" developments are at serious risk.
Ian, The new Queensland dams may well pay for themselves in the next big flood as we seem to have built houses and other infrastructure on just about every flood plain we can find on the east coast of Australia. When I travel north to the gold coast and Brisbane there are new houses everywhere at .25 to .5 million each and uninsurable, only need to save a few thousand from flood to pay for the dams. Perhaps this is the real agenda ?, despite the current dry, climate change may well deliver bigger floods, combined with a bit of sea level rise I suspect our "sea change" developments are at serious risk.
Blair, I have 33000L tank capacity, & a large roof, of over 22 square. I do not catch all the water which falls on my roof, as the gutter sometimes over flows, as do the tanks.
Even in a couple of consecutive years of less than 500mm rain, we did not run out of water with 3 adults, & 3 kids, 2 of them teenage girls with long hair.
That said, I can see no reason why the people of suburbia should not change their water use, rather than throw other people out of their homes, in their greed.
Dear Ian
I would be interested in seeing your costings that resulted in your conclusion that "provided the tank volumes are between 9,000 and 22,000 litres, it is cheaper than the supply from the water mafia".
Does this mean that a new home owner in (say) SE Qld, provided he or she had such an option, would be financially better off to source their water fom their roof? (I am not talking about taxpayer subsidies here)
I suspect they would have to alter drastically current water habits to obtain enough water from their roof to meet their expected useage.
As I said on an earlier BLOG it is very difficult to form an opinion on various water supply options eg roofs, dams, recycling, desalination when the public information is either incomplete and/or misleading.
Blair