I haven’t been paying enough attention, but apparently Andrew Bolt has been running quite a campaign to pressure the Victorian government to fix Melbourne’s water shortage with a dam on the Mitchell River, a river in East Gippsland a couple of hundred kilometres east of Melbourne. Trying to keep an open mind, I went for a wander with the camera just before the end of the year. You can see below for some highlights, or have a look at all the pictures in all their high-res glory here.
What the pictures can’t show is that the Mitchell is the largest wild river in south-eastern Australia. Its gorges hide patches of warm temperate rainforest (like the photo above), as well as sites like the Den of Nargun, important to the local Gunai people. Nor does it show that the Mitchell replenishes the Gippsland Lakes, a stressed ecosystem whose continued health is vital to a number of Gippsland tourist towns.
Equally importantly from a political point of view, if a mug like me can take pretty pictures of it, imagine what a latter-day Peter Dombrovskis could do in the area. While it’s unfortunate that being photogenic is a key factor in determining which ecologically significant habitats get protected, in this case being photographer-friendly won’t be a problem.
Damming the Mitchell is a crazy idea. Luckily, it’s hard to see how even a populist ranter like Bolt could seriously get it on the agenda.
Let me assure you from a relatively insider perspective that Andrew Bolt has very little influence on State government policy, and this ALP Government would never even begin the planning for such a move. Some loony urban Libs may contemplate the idea, but their Nat colleagues, whose power base is Gippsland, would quickly stop that.
Raising Glenmaggie dam, now that may have some merit.
I remember camping there a few years ago a woman I met who lived locally asked me to do one thing – not tell anyone about it.
It is a beautiful, picturesque river – I hope that Wilful’s political analysis is on.
Flood, baby, flood.
It’s a lovely river to paddle down when it’s high enough that the flat sections (and there are a lot of them) move a bit.
Apparently it was dammed some time back in the 1800s, and the remains of that effort are a bit below the Den of Nargun. Given how severely the Mitchell floods every once in a while, and the construction of the dam, it’s no surprise that the old dam only lasted a couple of years before it was washed away, at least from what I’ve seen/been told.
I’m sure the Melbourne electorate won’t think it’s stupid once stage 4 restrictions kick in.
By the way, the Mitchell river runs either in private land or National Park until above Dargo, so you’ve got huge issues there. The National Parks Act is extremely limiting and there would be the biggest shitfight to do this practically.
But why would anyone talk about anything Andrew Bolt proposes seriously?
By the way Robert, the Mitchell River NP management plan tells me that the park contains unusual and rare Dry Rainforest.
The Mitchell River is the last major river in southern mainland Australia not dammed anywhere along its length.
In 1894 there was an attempt to dam it – but a winter flood broke the weir, and its remains can be seen today just upstream from Glenaladale.
The Hamer government was going to dam it, and spent $1 million on a road into the proposed dam site – Angusvale. When the Cain government was elected in 1982, it “deferred indefinitely” the building of the dam.
The Mitchell is a wonderful place, with significant patches of warm temperate rainforest – kin to the rainforests of the NSW coast, and about as far west as these come. In winter with the snow melt, it is a wild threshing serpent of water, and in late summer a passive, gentle place great for walking and swimming.
Melbourne cannot go on sucking the rest of the State dry. The Mitchell flows into the Gippsland Lakes – forming the second largest silt jetties in the world on the way. The Gippsland Lakes are now in serious ecological crisis, with substantial algal bloom caused by inadequate water flow (the Thompson Dam takes a big gulp of the normal flow) and fertilizer runoff from farms. Damming the Mitchell would be the coup de grace.
We are already spending millions building the north-south pipeline – actually taking water from the Murray Darling system, which is in crisis, and we are already linking our water grid to Geelong – so Melbourne can take water from the Otways.
Melbourne has to start to live within its water means. A very good start would be to immediately stop logging our water catchments. once sacrosanct. Over the last 30 years a third of Melbourne’s water catchments have been logged. According to Melbourne Water and CSIRO studies, we lose at least 30 gigalitres each year from these catchments because of logging – equivalent to the water used by 150,000 Melbourne households.
Instead of buying out all the timber licences for a mere $3.9 million, the State government has committed – not to water conservation – but to spending over $3 billion on an energy intensive and environmentally destructive desalination plant.
In the meantime Victoria’s average temperature has risen over 1 degree since 1950 – faster than the world average – and stream flow and rainfall have fallen. Building a dam on the Mitchell is all very well, but the Thompson Dam is currently only 20% full.
Perhaps part of our water saving solution involves reducing our carbon footprint too.
But I doubt Andrew Bolt would agree.
Brian: that 30 GL figure is much higher than what I’ve seen.
As far as the Sugarloaf pipeline, I think that’s missing the point a bit. The diversions for the pipeline are a piddle in the ocean compared to what’s diverted for agriculture. The state government’s policy of appeasing irrigators is a much bigger issue.
Brian, you have made several errors of fact in your above statement re logging Melbourne’s water catchments, I hope this doesn’t reflect your legal research skills (and it’s Thomson, dammit!).
Far far less than 1/3 of catchments have been harvested, even though these uses have coexisted since before the dams were built, without any conflict. Approximately 300 hectares out of 157 000 have been harvested annually in recent years. There is no possibility that the other 50 000 were harvested in the 80s. It is not 30 GL according to the best available science, it’s growing to eventually 16 GL by 2050 (max difference between options), less than 1% of Melbourne’s consumptive use, or 10% of the desal plant’s 200 GL capacity. This is all within a context of increasing inflows anyway (with harvesting), as forests recover from 1939. It’s also not $3.9M. There is one, and only one, real issue with water supply from our catchments, and that’s the inevitable eventual bushfire that will burn them. When this happens we will have to decide if we want to keep them still forested or to replace them with grasslands and engineering. Of course, the additional fire insurance that the timber industry provides is rarely considered.
The desal plant is not directly comparable – as it will produce more than ten times more water than no harvesting could ever do, making a comparison is badly flawed logic. Which is not to support the desal plant, the emissions from that are its achilles heel. If it was nuclear/solar/tidal powered, I would have no issues with desal, except it’s a very pricey option compared to recycling. Direct environmental impacts are trivial.
Also, while the Thomson is only 20% ‘full’, that’s probably misleading since it was built at a luckily wet patch and would ordinarily probably never have filled. Which is not a problem the Mitchell would have, it would probably never fill.
Anyway, at least we can all comprehensively agree that Andrew Bolt is a dill.
Robert,
The total figure, on the available information, is 30 Gl, although some have said it is 40. The 30 figure is an extrapolation of the 20 for the Thompson.
Here is the source: http://www.tcha.org.au/water.html
“Managing Director of Melbourne Water, Brian Bailey, concedes that an additional 20,000 ML(20 billion litres) of water per year could be sourced from the Thomson catchment if logging were phased out (Fyfe 2003). By extrapolating data from the Thomson to the Upper Yarra tributaries, an estimate of an additional 10,000 ML could potentially be sourced there as well (Hughes 1999).”
Brian, 404 not found. Maybe http://www.tcha.org.au/Logging_water_catchments.html Very bad start for them, saying as a ‘fact’ that 67% of catchments are available for logging. Pure BS as they would have to know.
Another empty dam won’t solve Melbourne’s water needs. It may fill up during a flood once every ten years, but like the rest of Melbourne’s catchments, it will dwindle between these events. A total waste of money and completely ineffective to boot. It’s typical Bolt. Hopelessly misinformed and misguided.
The best options are to stop all logging in catchments (30GL), use more of the 400GL of stormwater per year that is flushed down drains (domestic and suburbun tank), use more of the 350GL of sewerage per year, a lot of which is flushed via ocean outfalls (recycling, third pipe etc).
The Mitchell dam is not an option. Desalination and the north south pipeline should be last ditch options, rather than the preferred ones. They both have much higher enviromental and carbon emissions impacts than reuse and recycle options.
But the state government prefers privatised mega projects thinking they can solve water needs with a big bang approach at arms length. Which of course, they won’t.
This is not original, I read it somewhere but it does seem apt.
“Building another dam is like a person with no money wanting another wallet.”
Or something along those lines.
I wholeheartedly support the plan to flood that site. (Provided Andrew Bolt is chained to the trunk of one of the trees when it happens.)
Er, yes, that’s how dams work. They’re intended to buffer water supply between sporadic rainy events to the point where they provide continuous water usage during both wet and dry periods. They’re such a good idea that most cities have at least one and often several, including Melbourne. Eventually a city’s growth exceeds the capacity of existing dams and a new one is required.
If the Mitchell was the next suitable location back in 1970, then it still is today. Contrived National Park legislation notwithstanding (and I mean notwithstanding).
Agreed. We have enough already. Building another one when there is not enough rain to keep it filled is pointless. An empty Mitchell dam won’t provide Melbourne with water most of the time. Its simple maths, I am surprised is eludes you.
You are missing the point. We have about 830GL or water per annum available right now from sewerage, stormwater and stopping logging in catchments.
The desal plant is estimated to provide only 150GL at $3+ billion and the north south pipeline 75GL at $750m. Very high costs and comparatively little water.
Well, on that much at least we’re agreed.
What didn’t elude me was the Mitchell flooding twice in 2007 alone – each time with enough water to supply Melbourne by itself for a year. I’m afraid your simple maths are too simple. There is enough rain, we just don’t catch and store enough of it to cater for a city with an extra million people in it since its last dam was commissioned.
The Mitchell is also listed under the Heritage Rivers Act 1992. Another source of legal challenge to block anything like this. This would require a strong majority in both houses or overwhelming public sentiment to change.
I seem to recall damming the Mitchell is also IPA policy, or at least that they have promoted it. I’m not worried about Bolt per se, but if its part of a wider campaign, rather than just a lone crusade of his it might become an issue.
That said, I think it is more likely that this is not a serious campaign, more an attempt to justify saying “its all the greenies fault” when people get annoyed with water restrictions.
The era where dams are a solution is gone. Part of me is a little sad a Hoover Dam could never be built again (in a democracy anyway, Three Gorges would never be built in a western nation these days), but then again keeping nice environments nice isn’t so bad either.
Move to Newcastle, we have shitloads of water. I rarely see our dams below 90%. NSW central coast/Newcastle is located where the southern and northern rain patterns overlap, so we get decent rain most of the year round.
If Dubai runs all those skyscrapers on nothing buy desalinated water I don’t see why Melbourne and Sydney can’t. the problem is Greenies don’t want dams built, but they oppose desal developments as well. Where do they propose we get water from?
Stephen, as most serious environmentalists will tell you, the main problem is that there are too many people. And no, we don’t have a solution.
And no, we don’t have a solution.
well, not all of us.
http://www.vhemt.org/
Another traveston of justice. Bolt, Beattie, Bligh – all tarred with the same brush. Except that the last two are politicians who can actually do something about destroying the environment. Bolt can’t.
Wilful, I know you didn’t mean to slyly infer that environmentalists all want to wipe out the human race, in the hope that many readers wouldn’t get the distinction between a “deep” green minority and the majority who want environmentally sound policies to make life better for actual humans – because I know you would never do a thing like that.
I’m sure the Melbourne electorate won’t think it’s stupid once stage 4 restrictions kick in.
I wouldn’t be so sure, CraigMc. Brisbane was at level 6 last year – but this never increased the appeal of the unloved, unimplemented and unmissed Traveston Crossing Dam project. The project is in hiatus – hopefully forever.
The main reason that dam is unpopular is because even though not one bag of cement has been poured yet, it has still cost taxpayers almost half a billion dollars. I’d say that’s shocking, but it’s par for the course with government projects down here too. Myki anyone?
That’s a fantastic site wilful. As a non-breeder (and also not gay), I wholeheartedly agree with their goals. I’ll have to send a few of their cartoons to some of my friends who occasionally ask if I’m ever going to have kids.
I suspect that AB really doesn’t care about the dam one way or another, but since it seems to have a ‘dog whistle’ effect in his constituency, it increases the number of hits his site gets…and therefore no doubt his pay cheque from the Harold Sin.
As for whether or not the dam should be built, most water professionals these days advocate multi sources for major cities like Melbourne. That is, dams, desal, recycling and demand management. The weakness of the dam proponents’ case is that it reduces system security because it increases reliance on dams at the expense of alternatives in times of drought.
Thinking amongst water professionals is analogous to the thinking amongst the more conservative financial planners – dams are like shares, you can keep all your money in shares and over the long term you will outperform most other sectors – too bad if you didn’t diversify over the past year or so. Same with dams – cheaper over the long term, but too bad if you haven’t diversified and a drought hits.
A comment about desalination. This is often thought of as a high power enterprise. If it is used only as a top up in longer than normal droughts, it is not that energy hungry averaged over the long term. Where it is used as a continuous supply is where energy consumption is high. Salinity of the return water is not usually a problem if designed properly.
However, if it is funded in some sort of public private partnership, that is where the problem lies, since the private operators want the thing to be operating continuously to maximise their revenue stream. Whereas if government owns and operates it, it need only operate in drought years, then be mothballed in between times so that total energy consumed and any saline discharge is much much less.
Same with dams – cheaper over the long term, but too bad if you haven’t diversified and a drought hits.
The trouble with that is, as Robert’s photo essay hints, there are externalities there that are not easily quantifiable. “Cheaper” maybe, but at what cost?
My personal view Helen is that those externalities are a very legitimate part of the decision making process, and may come down to what the community wants via the ballot box.
What really suffers sometimes is sufficient information to enable the community to make its choice and accept the consequences of its choice.
Thus I have no problem with a community making one choice or another based on good information…as long as that community then lives with its decisions and doesn’t grouse about water shortages, or loss of environmental amenity etc etc.
My main complaint about AB is that he really doesn’t seem to want a discussion, more a dog whistle exercise repeating the same points and ignoring the same points over and over.
Feral sparrowhawk, there is some right winger interest in building dams. Jon Faine had a guest commentator on 774 radio (Andrew … I think) who was trotting out the Bolt line. Maybe they are just spruiking for the companies that would build it.
And maybe its about politics too. The dam topic is a red herring. For example, where has the Maribynong dam championed by Ted Bailleiu during the 2006 state election? It was a ridiculous notion that they tried to establish as a populist cause. Trouble was, the catchment is all paddocks full of cow poo.
Those who promote empty dams as a solution while ignoring the 800+ gigalitres of water readily available for capture (stormwater) or reuse (sewerage) have a questionable agenda.
Marks, I think that PPPs have become a panacea for governments looking to divest their responsibility in provisioning infrastructure and managing scarce natural resources.
While companies are making money out of chopping down water catchments, selling coal fired power and selling water, there is no incentive for them to reduce consumer demand. So we need to nationalise power and water supplies to remove the commercial imperative to encourage more consumption, and we need to stop logging in water catchments – because every drop counts.
Wilful, if it really is just a small amount of catchments logged – then it can be easily stopped. The latest government science stated that the loss of water due to catchment logging was around 15GL. Based on the latest Victorian government water usage targets of 155 litres per person per day, the 16 gigalitres of water lost due to catchment logging is equivalent to the water used by 560,000 people per year (or 280,000 households). [link]
Why on earth do you keep trotting out the bushfires red herring out? This is classic industry gobbledygook. Logging catchments greatly increases bushfire risk, as you well know. Labor insider indeed.
For those who think the Thomson catchment is in great shaped, a picture is worth a thousand weasel words.
http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/images/1/1d/Thompson_catchment.jpg
I’d say the primary reason Maribyrnong failed to ignite any excitement was precisely because it smacked of tokenism. It was seen to be a puddle when Melbourne needs much, much more.
Plus it was almost in the city – not exactly the best use of real-estate. There are better solutions and Baillieu should have pursued them.
Craig Mc, the Mitchell dam concept is tokenism too. What about the 800+ gigalitres of water already in the system that is going begging?
While I agree the flooding of The Den of Nargun – the subject of most of your photo essay – and The Amphitheatre would be entirely inappropriate, the proposed dam site is at Angus Vale, some 15 km further upstream, towards Dargo.
Tony: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Thanks for pointing it out. However, I reckon Bolty would consider flooding the Den a bonus.
Even so, if the dam were built further up, you’d
a) still in a National Park, presumably featuring similar terrain
b) screws up the flow on pretty much the only wild river left in Victoria.
BTW, one of the Den photos is Deadcock Den.
Logging catchments greatly increases bushfire risk, as you well know.
O rly? Sez which scientist?
Labor insider indeed.
Not me guv.
So the desal plant will produce enough water for 5.6 million people then? Awesome, we may as well blow up the Thomson.
You know, linking to your own blogwiki isn’t exactly a showstopper as far as arguments go.
Helen, just a joke. Sadly, I have already bred, and don’t plan on sterilising my kids. As a matter of fact, I consider myself a strong light-green, I’m not a radical but firmly committed. Of course I hear sniggers from you and Peterc, but I don’t really care, I know enough to know that timber harvesting is about the lowest impact primary industry in Victoria, and is part of the solution, not the problem (though we wont go on). The essential point is, timber harvesting in the Thomson has a) nothing to do with the merits or otherwise of damming the Mitchell, b) far less to do with Melbourne’s future water supply than is typically claimed.
Tony of SY, whose proposal? That’s all farmland there.
Wilful,
From a 1980 report on the proposal to ‘proclaim’ the land in the Mitchell River catchment area. The proposed site (now part of the Mitchell River National Park) was at Angus Vale, 60 km north-east of Bairnsdale.
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/DPI/Vro/egregn.nsf/0d08cd6930912d1e4a2567d2002579cb/d322bcde0f31b132ca2571060080e328/$FILE/Mitchell%20River%20Catchment.pdf
60 km north-west
pretty pissant dam, 15 GL. A puddle. This is not the water solution you are looking for, Andrew.
15 GL? Two weeks of water for Melbourne. The newly reconnected Tarago Reservoir holds more than twice that.
You’d need a much, much bigger dam than that to make a substantial difference to Melbourne’s water reserves, which would presumably be easier to fill downstream with a bigger catchment. But downstream of the National Park it’s too flat.
Bye-bye, Den of Nargun…
Notice, also, that in the Den of Nargun photo (third from the top) if you look up other images on Google Images there is a waterfall on the left hand side. In the photo Robert took there is no water. So the flow is limited anyway.
The original 1890s weir was downstream of the Den of Nargun.
The Hamer Government’s proposed damsite was at Angusvale, upstream of the Mitchell Gorge and the Den of Nargun, but the whole of Angusvale is now in the Mitchell River National Park. Other damsites within the gorge were considered.
There is in fact nowhere realistically to construct a dam on the Mitchell which is not in the national park now – so the proposal involves loss of national park (just like the flooding of Lake Pedder).
The original plan was for a much larger dam, but the Hamer government settled on a smaller dam which would really only service the irrigation needs of the farmers downstream. They left open the option of increasing its size later to take water to Melbourne.
What’s now being pushed is a recrudescence of the original very large dam proposal – precise size, of course, not identified, nor the location.
The Den of Nargun is on a tributary – Woolshed Creek – but in the midst of a magnificent stand of rainforest. It sometimes flows very strongly (I’ve seen huge spates go down it) but in late summer often completely dries up.
A dam at the base of the Gorge would significantly affect the Den of Nargun.
Any dam would radically alter the river flow and ecology downstream, as has happened with the Thomson – and we all know about the Snowy.
Andrew Bolt, real? I thought he was a straw man.