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September 24, 2008
I've always thought that the Victorian Government's north south pipeline, which pipes water from the Goulbourn Murray River to Melbourne, was a bad policy in terms of sustainability. It assumes that there is extra water in the Murray-Darling system that could be used to increase Melbourne's water supply when all and sundry are saying that there is no water to save the lower lakes of the River Murray and the Corrong wetlands.
I see that Tim Flannery concurs:
Why would you take the water from an already stressed river system, and then they say 'Well, we're actually making more water in the end', which is bullshit. Sorry, there is only a certain amount of water in the system.Why would you do that rather than trying to do something about coal-fired power plants, which consume 20% of the water used in the state?
Critical human needs is the rationale. If so, then why is there little attempt by the State Government to store storm water in aquifers, or recycle storm water? Why the intense opposition of the Brumby Government to household water tanks?
Oddly enough, Flannery doesn't mention water in his quarterly essay Now or Never A Sustainable Future for Australia. He deals with coal, geothermal energy, growing forests to sequester carbon, sustainable agriculture within a framework of Gaian imbalance. But no mention of water or cities. Strange.
In the essay Flannery says that he has focused on the most urgent crisis ---the climate problem---in order to forge a sustainable way of living in the 21st century.
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The Brumby Government's rationale for spending $4 billion on a desalination plant at Wonthaggi and the north-south pipeline is to supply Melbourne with an additional 225 gigalitres of water because Melbourne will run out of water by 2010