I would agree with Peter and yourself that the Labor Government has forgotten the lessons of the past and has in fact become arrogant and out of touch with the community who want sustainable development. There are clear issues in Peter Wellington’s electorate which illustrate this clearly – state government want to devastate the Noosa Biosphere by constructing 275,000V power lines and substation hooking up to coal fired power, rather than adopting the alternatives that the community and the Council are looking for. Peter clearly needs to pick up this and other issues that are closer to home to fulfill his responsibilities to his constituents.

It remains to be seen whether if holding the balance of power he is courageous enough to force the next government to adopt 21st century solutions to fix the problems of SE Qld or whether he does not have enough vision and lets them continue with the business as usual approach which is turning the Sunshine Coast into the Gold Coast.

“Independent candidate responds to water policy questionnaire” and “Lawrence Springborg responds to Brisbane Save The Mary River Questionnaire”. The teaser for the latter is:

“On 8 March I responded to a questionnaire from the Brisbane Save The Mary River group and sent copies to other candidates contesting the seat of Mount Coot-tha, as well as to Premier Anna Bligh and to Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg. Lawrence Springborg replied almost immediately that same day. I responded to ask that he act against the principle driver of .Queensland’s water crises, namely population growth now actively encouraged by the Bligh Government.”

James Sinnamon

Independent candidate
for Mount Coot-tha
candobetter.org/QldElections
candobetter.org/QldElections/MountCoot-th

Our diminished rainfall in the past 9 years still leaves us with an annual average of 880mm. I think many people are planting drought tolerate plants in their gardens these days and most would probably accept that if we want to water a garden we should put in our own tank.

I was quite impressed that the Qld Water Commission gave some priority to maintaining playing fields etc so that we could maintain an outdoors lifestyle.

We paid the plumber supplied by the authorities to do a waterwise check. He went over our taps, put flow limiters on where appropriate and supplied and installed a new shower rose, all for $20.

We catch water in the shower and use it for the toilet, have a water bucket in the kitchen for clean water (emptying ‘cold’ hot water bottles etc) which we use for pot plants. I think we always will.

At our place we’ve got 16,000L of tank storage, a pool blanket and a front-loading washing machine. Our best effort has been 70 litres per person per day, and we get along OK.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/electioncentral/2009/03/11/the-traveston-dam/

At that time the situation here was on the slide. It was not until August 2007, when dam levels were down to 16.75% and even with severe restrictions (140L pppd) we were heading for Armageddon by about mid 2008. We were saved by a large low pressure system the likes of which had not been seen in SEQ in August since the 1880s. That put about 3% or so in the dams and we’ve now crept up to 46.89%, still with restrictions (170L).

I started off cautiously with my attitude to Traveston because I knew we needed the water. Now I’ve become happier with recycling and desalination and would very much like to see the project canned.

The only way of ensuring that we don’t get it is to vote Labor out of power for a term, I think. The dilemma is that Springborg and clowns colleagues are probably worse person for person than Anna’s bunch. Also on economics he’s so far off with the fairies that you can’t believe he’ll ever do a single thing in his platform that costs money. He might, but it’ll be at the expense of something that is already a necessity.

I’m sticking with my comment unless anyone knows better. In other words it was delayed not cancelled by action taken by Garrett.

If you don’t want the Traveston I think you have to accept desalination as an alternative. Originally the NP had some ‘four dams’ policy, which includes a dam further up in the Mary catchment, I think also problematic environmentally, but we haven’t heard any more about that for years.

Secondly it is arguable that scrapping the dam would benefit the state as a whole because then we wouldnt waste $3-4 billion to build the thing when we could build a desal plant on crown land at Bribie for less $$$ (and the water comes out immediately).

If a government can blow $0.5B without even turning a sod for a dam, they could easily blow $3-4B completing one. Unfortunately, the same people could also easily blow a lot more producing a desal plant – not to mention running costs.

God knows, our state government is.