Communities along the Murray and Murrumbidgee face more rain and more flooding, and there have been accusations, particularly from Leeton farmer David J. Linsday, that the situation is being exacerbated by bureaucratic incompetence, in particular, by Snowy Hydro releasing water into already flooded rivers, water that could be filling Lake Eucumbene.
I phoned Snowy Hydro this morning and put the various accusations that have been filling my email inbox to them.
Paul Johnson assured me that there is nothing Snowy Hydro could do to reduce the flooding because most of the rain is falling below Lake Eucumbene and Snowy Hydro does not have the capacity to pump from the lower reservoirs, for example from the Blowering or Burrunjuck dams, into Lake Eucumbene.
Mr Johnson confirmed that Lake Eucumbene is only at about 20 percent capacity; and that the Lake is enormous with a capacity nine times Sydney Harbor.
Mr Johnson also said that water in the higher reservoirs, for example Lake Tantangara, that could be diverted to Lake Eucumbene was being diverted to the lake rather than to the lower reservoirs.
The forecast is for more rain and already 35 council areas in NSW have been declared natural disaster zones. Crop losses are significant and global wheat prices continue to climb.
UPDATE:
I got it wrong. To find out what happened after I posted this short note, read http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/12/bureaucratic-flood-damage
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Global wheat price is continuing upward and taking corn with it.
http://www.thebull.com.au/articles/a/16045-wheat-prices-jump-on-fears-about-aust-crop.html
It is interesting that once again the rain is falling mainly on the plain.
Many high altitude dams are still below max levels while the lowlands keep getting flooded.
Gaia is reknowned for giving nuts to the toothless!
Eventually though, we should all benefit from those same nuts.
Hi Jennifer and Everyone,
Just to clear up some misconceptions.
David Lindsay is a well respected business man from Leeton and like most other business people throughout the MDB is appalled at what has happened with the Water Act.
Paul Johnson has totally mislead you.
The accuations have nothing to do with where the rain has fallen.
Here are the facts:
For most of the drought years Eucumbene Dam, which is the heart of the lower Basin irrigation system, and the biggest storage (4.6M megs.) has been down to under 15% and Snowy Hydro SH was unable to meet the its obligations to irrigators.
During calender year 2009 with increasing snow falls and rainfalls, Eucumbene rose to 35% at December 1st 2009.
With the big increases of both snow and rain during this year runins to Eucumbene from July to December 1 were at 20 year highs.
Guess what?
At December 1st Eucumbene Dam was at 27.2 % capacity and falling despite very high runins.
The original snowy agreement and all subsequent agreements have always put the conservation of water for the Murray and Murrumbidgee as first priority.
What has happened is that SH have been using water to generate power because both NSW and Victoria are short of capacity.
This has resulted much needed water being flushed to the sea to waste at a time when the two rivers involved have already been running a banker and the only storages available are full.
Now if you think that is scandalous enough, how about this.
For the last 6 years all general security irrigators have had next to NO water to grow crops and feed their families.
Coming into this irrigation season they were and are still looking at record crop prices.
They could also see most storages were full or near thereto.
All rivers were running a banker.
Irrigators were originally only given 35% water allocations on which to plan their years cropping.
This at a time when runins and stream flow were near record.
This has recently been increased to a maximum of 62%.
So here we have farmers with the land, the equipment, the knowhow and the desire to cash in on a booming market. We have dams running over spillways, rivers running a banker and now in huge flood and a now multi-layered bureaucracy will not allow farmers to buy water from the State.
There is a rising tide of disgust and dismay now covering about 2Million people that are in a mood to drown every Politician they can throw in the flooded rivers.
We are all very, very angry and will not allow bumbling bureaucrats like Mr. Johnson to continue with his lies.
By the way Spangles the rains have covered all catchments, hence the huge run-offs.
Jennifer, this should be front page headlines as the Water Act is now a far bigger scandal than pink bats or anything else for the last 20 years.
Pikey.
Pikey.
Thanks for that report, Pikey.
I had assumed from what Johnson said that the situation must be similar to Toowoomba where the total dam capacity is still well down but surrounding wheat areas have had an over-supply.
A pity they didn’t have some renewable energy “battery” system to pump the dumped water back up into Eucumbene.
So Snowy Hydro is using water to generate electricity…. But won’t sell farmers irrigation water to grow their crops….. a curious situation considering the amount of rain that has fallen and the inflows.
Flood releases are not the topic being questioned nor criticized. Mr Johnson was being disingenuous by even suggesting that the contention was thus.
I read into your narrative that SH is also obliged to provide irrigation water before electricity generation?
… Am I reading that right Mr Pike?
On the topic of flooding. Is there anyone close to the Goolwa barrage that could get me a surface water temperature reading just before it is discharged? It will be interesting to contrast flood flow temps with sea surface temps at present. Thanks in anticipation.
Ian
With the increased discharge can we expect a reinvigoration of the Blackfish, Congolli, Pygmy Perch, Mulloway, Garfish, Yelloweye Mullet, Jumping Mullet and Black Bream?
Pikey,
Can Eucumbene generate hydro with both its eastern and western outfalls? If so, why is it going out to sea when, now, there must be reasonable environmental flows in the Snowy without Eucumbene?
I understood the original purpose of the Snowy Mountains Scheme was to produce water for irrigation while at the same time produce hydro electricity.
Surely western outfalls are the only way to do both?
Hi Everyone,
In response to J. Hansford; Snowy Hydro only came into being in 1996 to allow the power being produced by the Snowy Scheme to be part of the commercialised National grid.
It is owned as flollws:
NSW Gov ——–58%
Vic. Gov. ——–29%
Com. Gov. ——13%
It does not own or sell any water; it is strictly a commercial generator of electricty and also owns other gas fired generation plants.
It is a major player in electricity trading.
It is obliged to abide by the Snowy Water License Agreement (1957) in releasing certain volumes of water into both the Murray and Murrumbidgee river systems each year.
The water is and always has been owned by the State Water Authorities.
It is these Authorities that sell water to the farmers.
For those who have been taking a closer and longer interest in the water debate in other papers I have written I point out the fact that this makes a mockery of the Commonwealth buying farmer licenses.
They are actually buying what they already own.
THE WATER. We are living in a dark age.
The whole purpose of the Snowy Scheme was to harness water that would otherwise flow to the Tasman sea and strore it in high altitude dams for release when needed to the west.
The whole scheme and its continued costs were paid for by the sale of emissions free hydro power.
The water released by Snowy Hydro is then captured on the Murrumbidgee by Blowering dam on the Tumut and on the Murray by Hume Dam.
It needs to be understood that there are NO storages on these rivers below those old dams.
What has been happening for the last several months is that the two dams in question are both full so any water released by Snowy Hydro is running to waste to the sea.
That is what this argument is about; it is not really about flooding.
At the heart of it is the fact that no new base load power stations have been built while our growing population requires more and more power.
So what is happening is Snowy Hydro are putting at extreme risk next summers water allocations for the food bowl of Australia by totally abusing the 1957 Snowy Water License Agreement and then lying about why.
Remember Eucumbene Dam at 4.7 M megalitres is the heart of the Lower Basin irrigation system and what we have following the best runins for twenty years is 8% less water in Eucumbene than 12 months ago.
Ther is quite a bit more detail but I hope this goes some way to explaining what is happening.
Pikey.
I don’t know about that Jennifer.
I think you’re being extraordinarily generous to say you got it wrong.
It looks to me like you were told a lie, or, if I am choosing to be generous….a half truth?
If you ring up and make a genuine enquiry to our water bureaucracies, we would all hope that you would be given a genuine and honest answer.
It is quite evident that this is not what happened.
I wonder how many others have been given the same run around?
I think we should all thank you for taking the time to uncover the whole story.
Well done.
Really Jennifer, you should know by now that any bureaucracy protects itself from reality by obfuscation. This whole water issue has been nothing but a sham from day one. What was supposed to conserve water for future use is nothing but another money making venture which moves the goal posts at the whim of whoever is in power.
As a resident of Toowoomba I have watched with interest the value that the current state government has put on the well being of our city and surrounds by the failure to pump water from overfull dams to fill our water supply dams. At one stage we were down to about 9% while the Brisbane dams were full to capacity. When the heavy rains of recent months caused these dams to overflow the water was allowed to run away, wasted, instead of being pumped up the Range. On inquiry I received two answers as to why this was so. The first was that the local council wouldn’t pay for the electricity to work the pump as it was too expensive. The other was that the pump was broken and too expensive to repair. And they wonder why people are so cynical about politicians.
The matter of Snowy Hydro is just another in a long list of iniquities perpetrated by state and federal governments to the detriment of the people who pay their salaries.
I very much of the management of water resources when there IS a lot of water around as opposed to the skills appearing to be available when there is a lack of water! It really is a bigger issue then state based decision making in my view. If warming is considered on a global level then surely our water should be considered on a national level. This is a federal thing in my view – just putting it out there. The residents of Toowoomba are very patient!