Once again water, or the lack of it, looks certain to be a prime topic of conversation.
Coliban Water has flagged the probability of stage-4 restrictions again this summer unless extraordinary downpours occur over the catchments.
Despite completion of the pipeline from Waranga Channel a year ago, Bendigo’s position is only marginally improved due to poor run-off into Lake Eildon over winter and, consequently, low allocations of water to customers on the Goulburn system.
Not only is water in short supply again, but this year marks the start of significant increases in the cost of water to urban users. Coliban Water, along with most water authorities in Victoria is in the same boat.
Years of under-priced water and poor forward planning have resulted in water charge hikes to pay for projects undertaken under crisis conditions.
Just look at the panic which has set in now that Melbourne has had a taste of water restrictions.
Not only is the government going to build one of the largest desalination plants in the world, it is also proceeding with a pipeline to connect the metropolis with the Goulburn system.
Both projects are contentious in that they are energy intensive, and even though the government proposes that the electricity should eventually come from sustainable sources, it will still be at a huge annual cost.
The decision to pump water from the state’s north to Melbourne is almost impossible to justify given Melbourne is not facing an emergency, and there are cheaper and better alternatives.
Melbourne has presently two years’ supply of water in store. Bendigo does not, nor does Ballarat, nor a host of smaller towns in regional Victoria.
The ‘spin’ has been that the government would supply funds to enable water-saving improvements to the rural channel system, and that Melbourne would be allocated one-third of the water saved.
Logic would suggest that if improvements to the system result in less loss due to leakage and evaporation, the water thus saved should be used for appropriate environmental flows, and for irrigation to grow food for the world.
Engineers have pointed out how Melbourne’s water needs could have been better provided by the building of additional reservoirs on Gippsland rivers which presently disgorge hundreds of billions of litres annually to the sea – in effect the same water which is to be desalinated at huge on-going expense.
So why is the government building the pipeline? In a word, politics. Elections are due in 2010, and the government is determined that Melbourne, which is where the political power resides, will not have the slightest whiff of water restrictions, no matter what the cost.
What a price Victorians are paying for decades of incompetent management of the state’s water resources.
