The largest dam in the world, The Three Gorge Dam on the Yangtze River in China, was completed, and ahead of schedule, just last week. And last week controversy errupted where I live in south eastern Queensland, Australia, over plans to dam the Mary River.
Interestingly the proposal to dam the Mary was not part of the blueprint for future infrastructure development released by the Queensland state government just last year, click here for the full report.
Right now, I don’t really have an opinion on whether the dam should or shouldn’t be built. But I would like some information about how much water it is going to deliver relative to other options including water recycling and desalination.
But I guess a problem for government scientists making forward projections is global warming. I guess there is an expectation that the dam will fill with water, yet the same Queensland government last year announced in parliament that we are going to have 40 percent less rainfall in 70 years (or was it 70 percent less rainfall in 40 years) as a consequence of global warming. [ Can someone find the link for me to the comments by Minister Stephen Robinson?]
For anyone interested in reading some of the opinion associated with a new dam proposal in Australia, I’ve been sent the following list of links by a reader of this blog:
http://www.qld.greens.org.au/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=243
http://www.savethemaryriver.com/
http://econews.org.au/story1_14.php?PHPSESSID=d0ba0bfd1dfdf5bb290ec2517a234e2a
http://www.themaryvalley.com.au/html/cms/103/traveston-dam-mary-river
http://www.qld.nationals.org.au/news/default.asp?action=article&ID=560
It is also interesting that the Queensland government just last year essentially banned dam building in northern Queensland through its Wild River’s legislation. Yet this is where the big rivers are in this big state. The Mary is really a little stream. Perhaps hardly worth the bother of daming?
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About the Three Gorges Dam, according to Xinhua News:
“The concrete placement of the Dam’s main section was completed 10 months ahead of schedule, which will enable the Dam to start its role in power generation, flood control and shipping improvement in 2008, one year ahead of designated time.
After the cofferdam is demolished on June 6, the dam’s main wall, often compared to the Great Wall in its scale, will formally begin to hold water, protecting 15 million people and 1.5 million hectares of farm land downstream from floodings, which had haunted the Yangtze River valley for thousands of years. Upon the demolition, a new landscape featuring a reservoir with a serene water surface behind the spectacular dam will gradually come into being along with planned rises of the water level.
The Three Gorges, which consist of Qutang, Wuxia and Xiling Gorges, extend for about 200 km on the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze. They have become a popular world-class tourist destination noted for beautiful natural landscapes and a great number of historical and cultural relics. This section of the Yangtze has a narrow river course which is inconvenient for shipping but boasts abundant hydroelectric resources.
… As China’s longest and the world’s third longest, the Yangtze River, together with the Yellow River, nurtured the Chinese civilization. However, its floodings have since long threatened lives and properties of residents along its valley. The latest deluge happened in 1998, which claimed about 1,000 lives and incurred approximately 100 billion yuan (12.5 billion U.S. dollars) in economic losses.”
On the downside I understand more than a million people were displaced as part of its construction and it was to cost about $27 billion to build.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I lived near Maryborough for quite a few yrars, & a mate of mine had a turf farm on the Mary, just a few kilometers above Maryborough.
In the mid 80s, my mate was on water restrictions so often, that he grew a bit of turf [8 acres] at my place, north of Maryborough, as I had a bit of water [not Mary water], I was not using. This allowed him to maintain continuity of supply to his main customers.
He lost money on the effort, but kept some important customers happy.
The city also had water supply problems, regularly. This river is not a great choice to improve Brisbane’s water supply.
Regardless of the suitability for Brisbane water supply, there is surely an ethical question here. Does Brisbane have the right to reach out even further into the state, taking other community’s resources, to feed its insatiable appetite? When will Brisbane start to take responsibility for catching its own water?
Its not too hard. My family have used only the water off our roof, held in 40000 liters of tanks, for the last 20 years. There is no town water for us, even though we are only 50Km from the GPO, & less than 30 from southport. If we can do it, what wrong with suburbia doing it?
Concern about future demands for water in SE Qld is lacking one important piece of information to householders; namely the cost per kilolitre to the householder of the various sources of future water supplies eg recycling, dams, desalinasation, home water tanks etc.
I have not seen any published data re the cost per kilolitre of water of these sources and I have not seen any discussion/information about using the price system to ration future supplies of water, just as the price system rations the distribution of many goods and services in Australia.
If water users were currently charged the expected per kilolitre costs of water from (say) dams, desalinasation,recycling etc then they would be in a position to change their water consumption and perhaps avoid future investment in dams etc.
It seems everyone is for public cosnultation but how can the public usefully contribute in the absence of data?
Blair
Hasbeen, the problem with suburbia using tankwater is one of public health, it is just too hard to ensure everyone has clean drinking water.
The cost is simply enormous, every house would need a tank and pump and would need to be able to filter the water for purity and the purification would need to be tested regularly, more licenses permits and red tape. Even tree pollen can turn the water putrid. And then there is the problem of backflow prevention into the existing main system as the tank would need to be mains connected to top up when dry.
Far more cost effective to build another dam.
I just read the save the mary river pdf, apart from a few nice pictures they did not say anything substantive; there are no real solutions only generalities. Populations will grow and they have just as much right to services as anyone else.
“…there is an expectation that the dam will fill with water, yet the same Queensland government last year announced in parliament that we are going to have 40 percent less rainfall in 70 years…”
The Department of Natural Resources and Mines last year went on a campaign quoting a 40% reduction in rainfall by 2070. That was odd since CSIRO documents on their own website (since removed) contradicted that statement. The reason for this deception was later revealed when the State Government raised water charges across the State. They had just been preparing the ground politically. Meanwhile, the State government has just spent over $20 milion increasing the spillway capacity of Whivenhoe dam to cope with increased flood projections. It’s a funny place.
Rog, I know the problems, & cost of supplying your own water.
I do not accept, however, that the lives, & dreams, of thousands of country people should be destroyed, just to save Brisbane residents the cost of looking after themselves.
After years of attending the Logan, & Albert water management plan meetings, we now know the truth.
It looked, for a long time, that they wanted our water for the invertebrates in the sand. But now we know. They can die, along with us, in our waterless waste, as long as suburbia has plenty.
A real problem has been government failure to aquire the land, these dam sites have been known about for many decades!, and much of the land could have acquired over decades and leased back for agricultural purposes. I bet we will see the same failures in the nuclear debate, the one thing we have to do now is have the government acquire the land for waste repository and reactor sites now (even if we do not use then) and stop development in the immediate vercinity of these sites. Perhaps land aquisition in wind farm areas also. We do want another case like Lucas Heights, or new Sydney airport in the middle of a population growth area.
The problem with dams is that they only fill with water if we get rain. Without rain … no water.
Also there is the issue of loss of high quality agricultural land, once this is gone (along with the animals and people that live there) it is gone forever, and thats’ a very high price to pay, especially in a country with so little arable land.
There are other ways to conserve and collect water that would not neccessitate such a high price. Properly sized water tanks on houses could be a big contributor, both to water collection, and minimisation of the stormwater surge after rainfall. The issue of drinking tank water is one that history should be able to solve. Out in rural areas, that is all we have to use, for all purposes. With a first flush system, tank water has tested as better quality than the tap water, even in the middle of Sydney.
Civilisations have foundered because of drought. Egypt’s Old Kingdom ended up with mass chaos and violence for decades, with starvation and cannibalism because of it. Then things improved and the Middle Kingdom arose.
We need to drought proof SEQ and dam as many rivers in the area as is necessary to survive such mega-droughts. That’s why we can afford to protect northern rivers where there isn’t the population.
I think you may be interested in this
The Phantom Water Crisis
We understand there is a water crisis. A small group of people are being asked to make a sacrifice to allow the building of the Mary River Dam so the majority of the people can have access to water.
This may be reasonable if the dam was really going to provide the extra water needed, however there is a basic flaw in the logic. Dams work well in cold wet climates, but in dry arid climates the soils dry out and absorb small rains. Runoff only occurs in major storms which occur infrequently and at random. The current shortage of water is totally predictable; it had to happen some time, it just happens to be now. It is totally ludicrous that we should be dependant on freak storms to provide our water.
Yet there is plenty of rain, just 1 mm of rain falling on a square kilometre gives a million litres of water. Almost a million litres of rain fall for every man, woman and child per day. Even in the densely populated Coolangatta, to Bundaberg, Toowoomba coast zone there is some 50,000 litres per person per day. Our dams only capture 1 in 2,000 of the litres of rain that fall; 0.05%. Even in the so- called drought there are reasonable falls of the smaller coastal rains which could provide the water we need. This can be cheaply harvested by systems of micro-harvesting, capturing and using the water locally, using wicking beds, percolation holes and tanks.
The water shortage is not caused by some unexpected drought but by a dysfunctional water bureaucracy, which has been asleep while all the symptoms of an impending crisis were obvious, then panics into an ill thought out repetition of a system that has already failed.
There is a great financial incentive for the water bureaucracy to hang onto its privileged monopoly position as sole water supplier. Peter Beattie cannot be expected to have detailed expertise on water; he is manipulated by the water bureaucracy. The Government needs to set up an organisation outside the traditional water bureaucracy, which has so demonstrably failed, to help householders, growers and local communities with setting up micro harvesting schemes to take advantage of the small but reliable coastal rains. This would provide a reliable source of water so we are not dependant on freak natural events.
Then we would not need the Mary dam, we could have green gardens and cut down the amount we spend on water.
Colin Austin
More information at http://www.waterright.com.au or contact colinaustin@bigpond.com
07 4157 2278