The Victorians finally agreed to hand over management of the Murray to a single authority BUT

• The deal cost $BILLION
• No more water will go into the Murray from Victoria until 2011!

Their irrigators will make the kind of changes that others have been making to improve the efficiency of use and delivery of the water for years without the subsidies.

Oh to be a self centred head water user.

The huge dams on cotton farms in Qld come in here as well.

My take on this is that anything that dams water that would naturally end up in the river system should be measured and counted and PAID FOR as water taken from the river.

We have one country and we should all be paying for the water we use and ensuring that there is some left at the “end of the pipe”.

Technorati Tags: Victoria, Australia, water resources, water efficiency, dams

The Murray at Murray Bridge, in South Australia, is currently 35cm below sea level and is to drop around 50cm lower by the end of April.

Meantime, wheat crops are being planted off the Darling and flood irrigated, cotton and rice which uses enormous amounts of water planted.

60 -70 year old farmers are crawling out over the mud at Lake Albert to extend pipes to keep stock alive and get muddy water for their homes and Lake Albert in parts is receding at 500 m per week.

Meanwhile Victoria refuses to hand control of the system to the Commonwealth 14 months after the $10 billion plan was offered.

So much for the ‘spirit of cooperation’ between States and Commonwealth we were promised with Labour coast to coast. I thought Australia was one country but nonsense things like this sound like squabbling between different nations not states in the same country.

My personal take is that when there is a shortage of water, the Federal Government should share the resources equitably and account should be taken of the $ earned per litre of water used for the various crops and industries. The farmers losing their water allocation should have compensation but as climate change bites, and Australia is one of the worst affected places, it is hard to see how anyone can justify water-wasting crops like cotton and rice, in the upper reaches of the river while the bottom end dries up and whole towns and cities are without water and without the industry and jobs that depend on the river.

Update on 26th March

This week all the State Premiers and the Prime Minister are meeting in Adelaide to the regular talk & argue-fest. In this morning’s paeter, the Victorian Premier was quoted as saying that Victoria has the best managed water resources in the country and he is not going to go anything to dissadvantage any Victorians.

It is easy to have the best managed water (for Victorians only) when Victoria has more rainfall and is on the headwaters of the river.

The management that is of concern, if how they equitably share resources with other states and in particular with South Australia where the river is rapidly drying up.

Victorians are able to go on driving around happily with “Victoria- the Garden State” on their vehicle registration plates. I guess that is what matters to Mr Brumby and his voters.

Technorati Tags: drought, interstate squabbling, River Murray, Adelaide, Victoria, Australia, The Murray, Murray Bridge, Lake Albert, water resources, global warming

A “Conditional Approval” system would seem to be a sensible step to allow for the development of new and emerging technologies to enable the kinds of changes we need over the next 10-20 years if we are to in any way manage the “runaway train” of global warming and its flow on implications.   I firmly believe that while Government needs strict regulations preventing environmental harm and enforcing greenhouse gas reductions, they also need to get out of the way and permit innovation.

I have previously mentioned coastal aquaculture located in high wind areas that would like to power their pumps with wind turbines but this is not permitted because they are too big to be domestic and too small to be commercial.  Bullshit is about the only comment that I think fits!

I sat in on the summary and outcomes session on coal seam gas water at the EcoForum.  This was a fascinating insight on how Government needs to be able to be more flexible in some of their regulations and a bit of across States consistency would help!

There is a large amount of water in the coal seams and it is regarded as a waste under rigid EPA restrictions and, although it is much needed, it is only allowed to be put into evaporation ponds.  They would even be in breach of their licence if they use the “waste” for jobs like dust suppression around their own mine site.

The discussion brought out very interesting State differences and strongly overlapped with a discussion of water resource management.  Australia is a Federation made up of what were originally separate colonies and the legacy at times seems to present difficulties in establishing sensible management of national issues like water (not to mention hospitals and education!). 

The water issue is huge in Australia.  A lot of people want the water and if the gas is to be extracted, the water must be also.  Power stations need to be cooled.  Some use treated sewage effluent, some cool with sea water and some use dry fans.  As it is logical to locate power stations near the coal and gas they are fired by, cooperation with this water would seem logical.

There was interesting discussion around the different rules between States and contrasting with overseas experience also.  Queensland does not have the concept of environmental water flows that is the norm in most states.  In the ACT the miners would have to pay to be allowed to evaporate their water – it would be regarded as a valuable resource to be cleaned and used, not a waste.  In South Africa if a miner extracts water or uses it, they have to replace it.

Kwinana in Western Australia was mentioned as an example of organisation between neighbouring businesses so that the companies trade their waste with each other on the principle that one man’s waste is another’s treasure.

If we can’t even agree about sensibly managing our water how in the **** are we going to get the 50-80% reductions we need in greenhouse emissions, the 50% reduction in available water, cope with an increasing population (50% increase was mentioned) and increasingly unstable weather patterns.

Get real Government and get a razor gang onto red and green tape!

Last week I talked about some of the ways that urban water is management in my home city, Adelaide. I had a challenging comment on how water should be freely available. It was interesting today to read what Professor Mike Young of the University of Adelaide and the SA Government’s Sustainability Roundtable said. I really like his view point. This is summarised in several dot points below:

• Water management has become highly political and used simultaneously to pursue equity objectives.
• The main role of price is to reveal value and setting the price of water according to value, stimulates innovation.
• Governments are currently crowding out private investment in water management and this has led to a lack of innovative solutions to water management.
• Having water as a tradeable commodity generates an extremely strong interest. People generally want to be able to buy water and be free of water restrictions.
• Discussion about water at the moment focuses on shortages but if an urban water management system was based on its value, this could open up opportunities for innovation and investment.
• Government is reluctant to allow private enterprise to enter the system. Under the current system, business is hesitant to enter the water market because it is too risky to compete with government monopolies. Water is still a political football.
• The current water management system is based on a grant/subsidy culture. Governments have subsidised and controlled water management systems in Australia rather than looking for alternative solutions and allowing business investments.

Perhaps not so popular politically with some sections of society but this is the direction we need to move.

One of the problems identified as the EcoForum I attended in Sydney 2 weeks ago was that while we need companies to compete and innovate to enable us to come up with the new technology we so desperately need, 50% of our population is philosophically opposed to competition. Here is another debate we have to have.

Technorati Tags: Pricing water, water, give it value, value, EcoForum, Sydney, Australia, Adelaide, SA Government’s Sustainability Roundtable, Mike Young, University of Adelaide, ISO 14001

Novel renewable energy technologies have been given a shot at a major contract after WA Water Corporation said it would support them to power a planned desalination plant.

The Water Corporation called for tenders yesterday to supply 200GWh a year of renewable energy for the planned Southern Seawater Desalination Plant in Binningup in the state’s south-west.

Some 160GWh would be supplied from tried and tested renewable energy sources, such as wind farms. But the authority wants up to 40GWh per year to come from technology not yet commercially proven on a large scale.

Meanwhile, an independent report into the environmental impact of the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant in Kwinana showed oxygen levels in Cockburn Sound have not been affected by the discharge from the plant.

My firm believe is that if we are to save the energy we need to, government needs to encourage private enterprise to experiment, compete and to think of new solutions outside the box. Well done WA!

Technorati Tags: western Australian government, Australian government, renewable energy, energy, give renewable energy a chance, WA water corporation, ISO 14001

In South Australia we have severe water restrictions because we obtain 40% of our water from the River Murray. We allow more water than this to run to waste as storm water because planners and regulators decided that the engineering solution of building a huge pipeline was much “better” than the previous practice of householders retaining rain water in tanks was not wanted and they also decided not to bother with any efforts to retain and cleanup storm-water.

Rain water is seen as a health hazard (regular tank and gutter cleaning would prevent this), tanks were not aesthetically pleasing etc. I had a small and well maintained rain water tank at my last house and one visitor was horrified – “I won’t drink that” he said, “birds might shit on the roof”. Wow! When I think about all the cows, towns, houseboats and varied agricultural activities that discharge (and shit) into the Murray, there is a reason why my rainwater looked, smelt and tasted better than the Murray water!

The crowning idiocy, in my opinion is the pricing policy. Water is grossly under priced removing all incentives to save water and water restrictions rely instead on absurd rules about using buckets for watering when drippers are actually more efficient and on neighbours “dobbing each other in”. The real absurdity here is that there is no way anyone monitors internal household or minor industrial use and regulators are apparently happy to see large established trees dying from lack of water which prevents them from removing CO₂ from the air.

People should be able to decide to use more or less water in their house or garden and pay large excess fees for overuse. There should be a formula that considers the number of residents and the land size and there must be a regular (at least monthly) billing of water use so people get regular feedback to allow them to monitor their water use and bill size.

Does any of this make sense? Apparently not!

The next engineering solution proposed is to build a huge desalination plant. No one seems concerned about the extra energy that will take because the water supply and energy infrastructure and greenhouse offices are all different government departments with different Ministers.

Technorati Tags: Water restrictions, idiocy, South Australia, Australia, severe water restrictions, River Murray, rain water, health hazard, desalination plant, engineering, ISO 14001

I have spoken before about the uses of reed beds and wetlands for improving water quality. A well constructed wetland, like the one in this photo, removes over 90% of the nutrients and 90% of the bacteria from the water as well as allowing for the natural removal of over 90% of sediments from the water before it is discharged in the rivers and sea.

However when I was reading Peter Andrews wonderful book “Back from the Brink” I learned of yet another important natural role for reeds in our river systems. This one should have been obvious. Peter points out that reeds in a river slow the water and spread it out over the flood plain so that the flood plain water table is recharged naturally and very importantly, the river bed does not erode down.

In our greed to have more flood free land we have build on these valuable floodplains and removed to reeds to prevent flooding and our rivers have deepened as they rush the water fast to the sea preventing the aquifer recharge that we so desperately need.

In the cities we have taken this a step further and concreted the creek and river systems so that they get rid of the storm water faster and leave us moaning about why we are facing water shortages and severe restrictions. (more…)

Wetlands remove over 90% of nutrients, harmful bacteria and silt from water. They are nature’s water filtration. Reed beds are natural freshwater wetland systems. They need to be shallow with a large water, soil interface and lots of reed. Reeds work as an oxygen pump, keeping the bed of the wetland oxygenated and a good environment for aerobic bacteria to clean up the water and provide nutrients for the reds to grow. Properly constructed, these wetlands can be a source of clean water to recharge depleted aquifers.

Samphire swamps are saline wetlands or salt marshes and are a vital part of the marine ecology. They should never be considered as wasteland as they often are. Get out of the car and use a magnifying glass to look at the plants. Some of them are very beautiful.

Over the years wetlands have been called a swamp, which has become a rather derogatory term. They have often been used as dumps and considered to be difficult wasteland. They flood and may well have acid sulphate soil when disturbed – so why disturb them. (more…)

John Collins from Toowoomba has just left a comment about the Mayor of Toowoomba and their receycled water issue that clearly demonstrates how high feelings can run about issues when the communication process is poor. His side won, Toowoomba is still short of water and he is still ranting.

I have been at an environment industry conference this week and one of the topics was the importance of communicating clearly all the issues between industry, regulatory bodies including councils and the community. This comment all this time later, illustrates the point of good communication and use of common sense. Practices need to change when circumstances do and clear communication is vital or else common sense disappears.

Technorati Tags: water resources, poor communication, John Collins, Toowoomba, Mayor of Toowoomba, recycled water, ISO 14001

I am not having a go at any industry sector but in Australia we have been in a severe drought and some places absolutely still are.

However I saw some figures that really concerned me at a conference last week.

My question is “can we really justify using desperately needed water for the low return produce?” I understand the needs of those industries and that the farmers involved would need some support but when fruit, nut and grape trees and vines are at risk of dying from lack of water and they give good $value for the water provided, I think we really need to question whether annual crops and exotics like cotton and rice should be grown during a drought. Both of these two crops are grown in the Murray Darling system which is under terrible ecological threat at present.

I actually found the entire discussion of the price of water allocations and the trading of same extremely interesting. There are no easy answers but this is a fair question that we should all be asking when resources are scarce.

Technorati Tags: Jean Cannon, envirojean, allocating water, how to allocate water, water allocations, ISO 14001