Only A Wacko Socialist Ideology Could Create A Water Shortag

November 26, 2008

TOO little water in Melbourne; too much in Gippsland.

Do I really need to join the dots for the Brumby Government?

Understand at last, guys? Just build that damn dam - and two problems become one cheap solution.

The Government's water policy always was a joke, but never as big a one as it was on Monday.

On the very day the Government warned Melburnians to use even less water, or else, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a flood warning on the Mitchell River.

Mitchell? Now there's a familiar name.

Or it should be, because I've told you about this river a dozen times or two over the past five years.

This was the river reserved for decades as the site for a new dam. No wonder: the Mitchell flows fast, has an enormous catchment and floods badly every decade or so. It would fill a new dam three times faster, on average, than the Thomson River now fills Melbourne's biggest.

In fact, the Mitchell flooded twice last year alone, with so much water flowing to waste in the sea in June - destroying farms and roads on the way through - that we could have almost doubled Melbourne's entire water supply today if we'd only had a dam there to catch it all.

But we didn't dam that 540 billion litres that swept into the sea, did we? We didn't dam the water in the November flood, either. Or this lot, now rushing down the river and triggering the latest flood alert.

If we had, there would be no need for the Government to tell us on Monday we must slash our water use yet again to 155 litres a head a day, down from an average use of 165 - voluntarily now, or almost certainly by force later.

How suicidally stupid we've been.

It was already a scandal that a First World city should be so short of water that many of our ovals can't be used and we're reduced to showering with a bucket just to save the gardens that were once the pride of the "Garden State" - the logo we've had to strip from our number plates.

But to scandal now add shame, because experts now tell us that to save even more water we shouldn't flush our toilets so often or wash our clothes so much. Something literally stinks: I can't remember when last a great city slipped backwards so badly.

The Government for a long time has blamed this shortage on global warming, as if we'd never had to cope with droughts before.

Yet, look at the floods of the Mitchell - the rains do indeed still fall, even if not in the same places, and the water is there for anyone prepared to build a dam. See also the heavy rains now filling the dams in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth that were built, thank God, long ago by people less shortsighted.

No, the real cause of our shortage has been as I've warned since 2001 - that Melbourne has added a million more people since we built our last big dam, the Thomson, and never bothered to find more water for the newcomers' extra showers, toilets, washing and gardens.

This shortage of water is, in fact, almost entirely man-made. Government-made, to be precise - given our politicians simply failed to defend us against the droughts that have always plagued the city since settlement, and always will.

The Productivity Commission in a report this year agreed: "For the past two decades, and in contrast to earlier years, most governments avoided investments to augment supply . . ."

AND the commission tried to figure the cost of this colossal failure, which has gardens dying, business wilting, foundations cracking and backs bending in bucket brigades: "(T)he annual cost of the water restrictions to Australian households is probably a multi-billion-dollar figure."

So why exactly did we not dam the Mitchell - or, indeed, any of the other alternative rivers in Gippsland, also now running full?

And why is Premier John Brumby utterly wrong to yesterday dismiss this as a debate no longer worth having, given we need water now?

Blame religion. This green-glazed Government decided not to build the dam we badly need because it would be . . . sinful. A crime against Nature.

Or as Melbourne Water put it: "(B)uilding new dams is no longer socially acceptable." Oh, and all remaining "water (is) currently used by the rivers", anyway. Ommmm.

And so the Government first turned the dam reservation on the Mitchell into a national park, and then - just to be sure - passed a law banning a dam on 18 "heritage rivers" including the Mitchell, despite admitting this was "the largest free-flowing river in southeastern Australia without a dam".

Meanwhile, our existing dams were partially drained for "environmental flows" to help fish and reeds - bugger the humans - and Lake Mokoan was turned back into dust.

YES, insane, I know. So why did so few people protest? Why did so few of our water professionals warn this was a madness we would come to regret?

Well, we're regretting it now. Too late did the Government realise we really were running out of water, and fast. Melbourne is now starting this summer with dams less than 34 per cent full - compared with an already skinny 40 per cent this time last year.

Premier Brumby has at least now stamped on the accelerator in panic, demanding a $3.1 billion desalination plant and a pipeline from Goulburn's water supplies be built by 2012.

But the desal plant will give us just a third of the water of a new dam on the Mitchell, and at more than twice the price, while the Goulburn pipe will take water from parched farmers who have next to none to give.

But do these two projects - over-priced, energy-hungry and unfair though they are - make a debate about a new dam as pointlessly yesterday as Brumby claims?

Not at all. Melbourne is expected to grow by another million people within just 20 years, and Melbourne Water chairman Cheryl Batagol warned last month that the day the desal plant comes on line is the day we already need to ask: "Do we need to go again?"

Make no mistake. Melbourne will still need more water-unless we really do think civilisation means leaving our toilets unflushed, our gardens unwatered, our pools unfilled, our ovals unplayable, our farms unirrigated and our clothes unwashed.

A dam or decline? You choose. But this time don't tell me we don't have the water. Check out the Mitchell.

It's merely the will to harvest it that we so lack. And the will to save ourselves from such stupidity as we've seen, and now suffer.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_join_the_dam_dots/



Warmest Regards

Bonzo