bznoo
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 Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:39 am Post subject: God Save Us From Greenie Ideology!! |
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God Save Us From Greenie Ideology, A Melbourne Prayer
October 31 2008
THE more the Brumby Government tells us Melbourne won>t run out of
water, the more you should panic.
Here we go again, with (No) Water Minister Tim Holding burbling that
this time he>s fixed the draining of our dams, now just a third full and
falling.
He>s taking water from dusty Goulburn farmers, and is building a $3.1
billion desalination plant, so fixed!
"It>s a solution for decades to come, not for 10 or 20 years, but for 50
years-plus," he promised.
Except it isn>t, of course. It>s 20 years and a million more Melburnians
since we built our last dam, and in 20 years we>ll have yet another
million residents in this city, all needing a drink, shower, flush and
sprinkler.
So, with rainfall again as scarce as it used to be before the wet
decades after the war, it>s no wonder Melbourne Water chairman Cheryl
Batagol last week said, well, actually, minister . . .
Actually, we might need yet another big water source within 10 years.
When the desalination plant comes on line in 2012, Batagol warned, we>ll
then have to say: "Here>s our augmentation . . . and do we need to go
again?"
In August the Department of Sustainability and Environment quietly gave
the Government the same message - that even with the desal plant
Melbourne might be back on today>s tough water restrictions within 20
years. Gardeners, keep your buckets and Deep Heat.
We should have known already not to trust Holding, of course. His
blather is par for this water course, which is why our ovals and gardens
are dying all over the city.
Just check the Government>s past such reassurances. It>s a history of
"she>ll-be-right", followed by "gawd-save-us" - a pattern that confirms
the Government is so blinded by green ideology that it would rather the
city went brown than confess we really do need to find big new sources
of water. Like, cough, a dam.
It>s astonishing how wrong have been the people we pay to keep us from
going dry. Take the committee the Government appointed just eight years
ago to find what needed doing to keep Melbourne in water by 2050.
Its head, Prof Nancy Millis, reported the following year that although
it seemed on current usage that we>d run out of water by 2012, we didn>t
have to do that much to make those supplies actually stretch for
decades.
We just needed to use less water, hook up the old Tarago reservoir, and
pump a bit extra from the Yarra if we really had to. Easy done.
"(If) we continue the take-up of modest conservation measures and
squeeze more from our catchments, our existing catchments can supply the
needs (until) at least 2050."
Really? Well, we>ve cut our water use and we>re hooking up the Tarago
reservoir. The Government has even stopped pumping water into the Yarra
for "environmental flows", yet look where we are just a few years
later - dams so empty that not even a hurriedly ordered desal plant and
a pipeline of farmers' water will save us for long.
An isolated misjudgment, you say?
In 2003 we got a report on Melbourne>s water from the Water Resources
Strategy Committee, which the Government had studded with activists who
shared its green Left vision - Mark Crooks of the Victorian Women>s
Trust, Gavin Duffy of the Victorian Council of Social Service, and
dam-hating Tim Fisher of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
It, too, reassured us Melbourne would have enough water until at least
2050 if the Government simply forced us not to use the stuff.
Brilliant! It>s the ultimate useless strategy.
This committee, too, said yes to connecting the tiny Tarago, but no to
any new dams, because of their "unacceptable environmental and social
cost".
Of course these people weren>t stupid and knew we might still need one
thing more to keep us from running dry. So in one paper they also
suggested "something could be learnt by exploring the drought response
strategies adopted by indigenous people, plants and animals".
How they clapped in Fitzroy. How they ommed in Northcote.
But there was a curious absence of detail. Which indigenous strategies
did the committee specifically want our city of 3.5 million people to
adopt? Should we be moving from waterhole to waterhole? Abandoning our
weak? Digging dry creek beds for desert tree frogs, swollen with stored
water?
I asked in vain, but by now it was 2006 and the Government had yet
another no-worries water report, this time the draft strategy of a
committee made up of big-shots from Melbourne>s water authorities and
the Government.
This report, too, said the solution to not having enough water was
simply to make people use less. Just as the solution to famine is to eat
less.
Dams were once more damned as "no longer . . . socially acceptable". And
a desalination plant was dismissed as unnecessary and a threat to global
warming. Even taking water from the Goulburn was ruled out for being
against "government policy".
But she>ll be right, the report prattled. Just add that Tarago dam and
some Yarra water and we>d be set for decades.
"(With) the successful implementation of water conservation and other
supply actions, Melbourne would not need to use alternative supplies
until after 2030 - so we have plenty of time to further investigate
recycling or desalination," the committee said sunnily.
"That is why this draft strategy outlines ways to conserve water first,
and to delay alternative sources such as desalination as long as
possible."
Great work, guys. "As long as possible" turned out to be mere months, as
Labor-frantically contemplating a waterless Melbourne in a few years -
suddenly announced a desalination plant was urgently needed, after all,
and not in 2030 but 2012. And tear up that "government policy" - we>ll
need that Goulburn water, too, thanks.
As I said, you can see the pattern - and the motivation. Again and
again, we have the Government and its appointed experts refusing to face
the fact that a fast-growing city can>t rely on a water supply that was
last extended in 1983, with the completion of the Thomson Dam.
We>ve needed new water for years, and the most obvious place to find it
was in a river. Indeed, we still need that dam, if we>re to have enough
water to last us until 2050.
We even have the very river - Gippsland>s Mitchell, which flooded twice
last year, sending more water into the sea in one devastating burst than
is left in Melbourne>s biggest dam today. It>s a fast-flowing river that
was even reserved long ago for a new dam, until this Government turned
it into a national park to keep its water for the fish, rather than the
humans.
But which government expert or bureaucrat dares tell the Government its
green faith must no longer be allowed to endanger Melbourne?
I>ll tell you which ones - the ones who first quit. Alan Pappin, for
example, was chairman of Southern Rural Water when the Government got
him to see if building a new dam on the Macalister made sense.
He recommended against, of course, citing the usual, fashionable
environmental reasons. But three years ago, the then retired Pappin told
me he>d changed his mind: "We need to look again at this notion that it>s
a no-no to have a new dam."
This year if was the turn of Alan Cornell, who on stepping down as
chairman of Yarra Valley Water confessed the Government>s ban on new
dams was ridiculous and should be "revisited".
"If a precious resource is going straight into the seas, pure water out
of the sky, why wouldn>t you attempt to capture it?"
Why not, indeed, when government figures show we could build a new dam
that would give us three times the water of the desalination plant, and
at half the price. Or better.
But hear the Government once more protest that we>ve now got plenty of
water - enough until 2050.
Yeah, it said that last time, didn>t it? And the time before. And the
time before that.
I suspect it>s as wrong now as it>s been for years. And until it thinks
with its cool brain, rather than its green heart, this once-lush capital
of our Garden State will keep growing browner by the year, in a crime
against our culture.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_going_to_water_in_a_crisis/
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
"It>s very appropriate that it [An Inconvenient Truth] got an Oscar from
the land of make-believe." Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of the Natural
Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP.com), Former Professor Of
Climatology, University of Winnipeg |
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