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?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The key point from this graph is that there is no evidence of any long term decline in the likely water yield from either this site or from the existing Dam catchments, as Beattie has claimed. Osama Bin Beattie has justified his need for new dams by adjusting the long term yields of the existing infrastructure and comparing it with an expanded demand. All of which are wrong.
Most of the new population will have water tanks because they are a distinct marketing advantage and they deliver cheaper water than mains supply. This is especially so when the $1,000 worth of red tape that is needed for a tank system is put through under the one set of approvals for the house as a whole. Major synergies accrue.
What else can one say? Beattie lies, and lies, and lies and lies even more. And according to recent research from U of Southern California by Prof. Adrian Raine, (British Journal of Psychology 11/05) the most accomplished liars have such an excess of prefrontal white matter, for communicating, that there is a serious shortfall of grey matter, for the actual processing of information. Ergo, liars are morons who should never be trusted with complex decision making.
For the above mentioned paper by Raine, see;
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/187/4/320
When can we do blanket MRI’s on the SES of Premier’s, EPA and DNRMW and Health? Or is it already a prime selection criteria?
The lie that I find most annoying, is the one about the worst drought in a century.
So far, this year, my rainfall is above average, as is most of S E Queensland. Its only an inch or so, but its on the right side of the ledger.
It gets even worse. So far this decade we are only about average, but we are sone 400 mm [16 inches] above last decade, for the same period.
If we are in the “WORST DROUGHT IN A CENTURY”, how come we’ve had MORE RAIN THAN LAST DECADE.
How can the professional media allow our illustrious leader get away with these lies, which are so easily proved.
Just one phone call to the Bureau will give them the story. It must be one they don’t want.
Well Hasbeen – not sure exactly where you live in that big wide SEQ area but there has been little runoff into the dam. And http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/rainmaps.cgi?page=map&variable=anomalies&period=24month&area=qld show sizeable deficiencies. And don’t see that a pro-dam comment. Just talking numbers.
The local media seem to be on the attack if anything:
http://thecouriermail.com.au/extras/blogs/water/index.html
Luke, I was not discussing the state of the dams. None of our dams fill with average rainfull. The Hinz dam, on the gold coast is only full because they had a major rainfall event.
It will take a major rainfall to fill the existing dams, & the new ones.
The current dam on the Logan has had no water available to farmers for 2 years. Beaudesert town was so worried about running out of water, that plans have been made to connect to Wivenhoe.I find it hard to understand why you would build dan another in the same catchment.
It would be funny, if it weren’t so damn expensive.
The thing I am annoyed about is the man telling bear faced lies, & being allowed to get away with it, by a lousy media.
It appears that, not only can’t they do anything right, but they can’t tell the truth about anything either.
But they aren’t promoting the new dams as “drought breaking” technology. Obviously they won’t fill until we have a major event, but I’m sure the engineers have run and re-run the figures. They would know how the dams would have performed under the rainfall record we have as well as the usual extreme event safety stuff.
The argument is that the region needs more water overall storage (which you could argue should be met through more self-sufficiency in conservation, household tanks or recycling etc – but that’s another debate).
If you argue the current dam is dry, will always be so, and the new dam will never fill you’re asserting a permanent climate shift – I don’t think we’re suggesting it will never rain heavily ever again. e.g. Russ Hinze dam did fill in recent times.
But conceivably if you had bad luck the dams could sit there for years before they are filled.
The dams, when built, will eventually fill.
What spiv central has not released is the realistic cost recovery scenarios for the new dams. It is a statistical certainty, given the fact that there has been no significant change in long-term rainfall numbers, that the Wivenhoe/Somerset/North Pine System will get a flood level dump by the time these new dams are built.
And when these three are full, there will be 1,760,000 megalitres, or 7 years supply in stock. And this means that, data fudging notwithstanding, the first six or seven years of the life of the new dams are most likely to produce nill economic return.
The sole purpose of these new dams is not to actually supply water but, rather, to supply a buffer of reassurance to the punters.
And the real irony in all this is that on the balance of probability, the large rainfall event that does fill the existing dams will be of a scale that will use some of the 1,974,000 megalitres of additional flood storage capacity. And this volume, given that we have no capacity to shift it around to other storages with spare capacity, will be quietly dumped after the public’s attention has been suitably distracted.
Even the annual interest on $1.7 billion worth of unused, evaporating Dam water, would buy some pretty good health care for your ageing mother and my long suffering aunt. But don’t worry about facts folks, perception is everything to a pathological liar. It is the only thing they can comprehend anyway.
Luke, It must be great living in your world, where engineers site dams, where they will catch most water, & politicians do their best for community.
Where I live, [Queensland], Politicians site dams, where they will catch most votes, [or loose least], & do their best for their re election. The engineers then come in, & try to make something usefull out of the mess.
Hasbeen
Hasbeen is quite right, the same situation exists in Central Coast NSW where dams were sited where there was least political fallout – and least rain. For Wyong Shire the Mangrove Creek dam was positioned in a remote but known rain shadow area and has never been full, not even half and ratepayers are now on level 3 restrictions. If they had put it on the other side of the hill it would have been far more full but would have also attracted the ire of any number of AG’s (Action Groups). Similarly with Gosford Shire, dam on the wrong side of the hill.
In the Hunter the dams are where it rains (Lostock is full) and there are no restrictions on domestic usage and they are now building a pipeline to Wyong to sell water.
A waste of money isnt it?
And wherever one looks, the best catchment of all is a rooftop where the water comes freshest and cleanest off the Tasman/Coral Sea. And provided the tank volumes are between 9,000 and 22,000 litres, it is cheaper than the supply from the water mafia.
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
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.
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.
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