Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has declined to give Anna Bligh’s Traveston Dam the tick of approval.
Bligh inherited this project from Peter Beattie, and I, and a lot of others, always thought its conception in the first place had been as a political wedge. It had a lot more to do with Beattie’s manoeuvrings to split the Libs and Nats in the lead up to the 2006 election than any rational assessment of how to ensure South East Queensland’s water supply into the future.
When still Deputy Premier, Bligh faced down many Mary Valley locals protesting the dam, and I wonder whether her reticence to admit the thing was a dud has something to do with that. I would hope not, but Bligh certainly hasn’t displayed the deftness in backing away from stupid and unpopular decisions (which state governments are often in the habit of making) that her predecessor had.
It’s a good thing that Garrett has nixed the dam, but the waste of time and money that could have gone into much smarter thinking about water futures, and the needless uncertainty and suffering caused to Mary Valley folk is most assuredly not.
This is a good decision – but one that blind freddy could have made. Garrett still has zero credibility in my book as an environment minister.
Garrett’s application of the precautionary principle is confused and hit and miss – it gets further compromised very quickly when $50 billion gas projects are proposed.
Congrats to the Mary Valley resident’s who had to unnecessarily endure Bligh’s stubbornness.
Glad to see the dam has been rejected but the cynic in me sees it as Rudd not wanting to lose Queensland seats at the federal election.
Sam, another cynical take could be that Rudd thought it was important that Garrett have a high-profile win and chose to let him have one on an issue where there was no constituency which was likely to go to the mattresses in response.
Having said that, I’m very glad that the picturesque little towns of Imbil and Kandanga will still be above water for the forseeable future, and that the lungfish have one less problem to worry about.
Echoing Paul’s cynical sentiment @3 I am now wondering what diabolical decision Garrett is about to make. He hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory as far as I’m concerned.
Also glad to see that the dam has been rejected. Didn’t look like a brilliant answer anyway, given the changes in rainfall patterns.
The Mary River locals will be delighted, and few will man the barricades to argue in favour of the dam.
Now Anna Bligh and her merry men can get on with designing a better answer. Why not desal powered by renewable energy, or by a dedicated combined cycle gas plant? Maybe they could put some of Queensland’s coal seam methane to good use?
It’s a perfect opportunity for Bligh to push on recycled water and increasing subsidy for rainwater tanks – but as the Bligh government is absolutely witless about water – it will be more Tugun failures that will get the go ahead.
Iain @7, why not subsidies for installing greywater recycling?
Apparently the average household uses as much water on their garden as in the house. If we could use the household water again, on the garden, we would halve our consumption of fresh water.
Apparently most of the household water doesn’t go down the toilet (which needs proper sewage treatment), especially these days with water-saver toilets. Most of the household water is very lightly used in the shower, sinks and handbasins – and then goes straight down the drain.
If the government provided suitable incentives for the replumbing work, perhaps a lot of households would take up greywater recycling?
It all sounds a bit whingy here. Great news for fish and all.
Elise
Ive always wondered why it isnt possible to run a dual sewage/water sytem. By which I mean one setup for potable water and another for lightly treated/grey water.
I realise the expense would be greater, but if the holes dug why not put in 2 sets of pipes.
Most greywater could be lightly treated before being available for “ouside” use such as gardens, while a seperate set is the “good” water for domestic use. It would certainly green up gardens again.
Hi Elise,
Yes, of course.
I use rainwater tanks for all clear water and an econova for all waste water.
If Bligh thinks Plan A is a dam, and Plan B is desal – then we quite frankly need a new government – one that isn’t completely witless on water policy.
Mole, that sort of setup exists at Mawson Lakes in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. We took a field trip out there about 10 years ago now. They also use wetlands to treat stormwater and use aquifer recharge in winter to store the water for use on parks and gardens in summer. It’s a much more efficient way of doing it, than having every household install a greywater system, it also means that water quality is carefully monitored. Greywater has sodium, detergents, enzymes etc, which is why ‘hard-plumbing’ a greywater system can be quite a bureaucratic process.
I live on the coast adjacent to the Mclaren Vale wine region and believe it or not I still have a septic tank, but we are part of a “common effluent disposal scheme” which means that liquid waste from the septic is connected to a sewer that pumps waste water to a treatment plant, where it is treated and pumped out to the vineyards to be used in irrigation. The solids are pumped from the septic every 5 years.
Labor SA is in pre-election mode and interestingly stormwater seems to be a big issue, but our Premier is dead-set against it being treated and pumped into reservoirs. Seems it’s okay for it to go out to sea and mix with [obviously] saline water, be desalinated and then be pumped to the reservoirs but to intercept it before it hits the ocean is not okay…? Does anyone know if there is in any logic in diluting it with seawater and then treating it? I would have thought that the salt would be the most problematic aspect of water treatment..I know that stormwater is high in particulate matter, petrochemicals and heavy metals, but so is the gulf waters of Adelaide, since it’s had stormwater dumped into it for decades.
Hooray for the lungfish
Ah shit, our water rates are going up! Thanks for nothing, Garrett!
God on Peter Garrett. What would we have done without him. He listened and acted properly. How can Premier still want a dam that will kill off endangered specis and wreck a lovely valley. Hope those who have had to sell up are compensated, or given their property back! A big balse up if there ever was one.
Given that the lungfish is endangered, I hope the Qld Government will still proceed with acquisition of the properties in the area, and exclude human activity (except for appropriate monitored visiting/observation sites).
The lungfish is really significant, and surely a few houses in the area and exclusion of humans from a few hundred or so hectares is less expensive than building a dam anyway.
Assuming of course that it really was about the lungfish and the environment, and not about middle class lifestyle choices for a few in the Mary Valley.
(My own position is that I figure if the middle class lifestylers were not affected by the dam, the lungfish would be fillets for all they would care – but I am a cynic).
Furious Balancing #12, the reason the Rann govt does not want to treat stormwater is because it takes a lot of land which it would rather use to cram more people in.
Cramming more people into Australia is the ‘baseload’ economic policy of both major parties.
The Environment, quality of life, living space, services – mean nothing when pitted against the ‘growth fetish’ of our business and political leaders.
“Third pipe” systems using both recycled water and stormwater seem to work quite well for new developments.
For existing housing stock and suburbs, the cost of replumbing is apparently too high compared even to desal.
And riskier.
In a new house, the plumber knows where all the pipes are.
In an old one, you connect the third pipe and if there is a cross connection anywhere, you are drinking the recycled stuff.
However, the Mawson Lakes experiment shows that this sort of development can reap big bucks for the developers – people love the aquatic environments and the wildlife and flora it brings. Along with the capital gains.
fb @ 12
“… Does anyone know if there is in any logic in diluting it with seawater and then treating it? I would have thought that the salt would be the most problematic aspect of water treatment..
Nope. It takes more energy to desalinate the higher the salt content. The problem with stormwater is often the industrial crap that is in it. However, pre-treatment via wetlands arguably makes it easier to treat than desalination. At the very least, you would think that SA Water would use wetland treatment, injection into the local aquifers, and then dilute the brine stream effluent from the desal plus blend with the desal water. However, SA Water got rid of its technical experts years ago. Unless someone from overseas comes in, they just don’t have the expertise. That is probably the real reason.
Have fun with your new water rates. We sure aren’t in Melbourne.
Tank water systems would be used much more effectively if people were given some credit for tank water used domestically. (By credit I mean being able to use town water to water gardens in return for water used domestically.) With a credit people would run their tanks low so that max storage capacity is available when it rains. without a credit people run their tanks as full as possible to maximize their chances of keeping their garden alive during dry spells. They are not willing to risk (Most Brisbane people put in tanks to save gardens, not save on town water.)
For example: I have a 10,000 litre tank. A credit limit of two full tanks would have effectively doubled my garden water storage. In the last few years my estimate is that I would have recovered an extra 50,000 litres if the tank had been low because of domestic use. My latest water bill gives an average consumption of 0.28 kl/day or 102,200 litres/yr. There are a lot of tanks in Brisbane these days so the impact of using tanks efficiently should help reduce some of the impact of saving the lungfish.
It would also help if Anna used this decision as an excuse to screw up her courage and turn the new water recycling plant on.
A great result and hearty thanks must go to all the people who put in such a huge effort to bring it about. Good on ya MATES!
A couple of points:
We have to assume that there will be many more bizarre and counter-productive decision-making travesties – like Traveston – from our state and local government bodies.
Consider this: within a very short distance from where I live, we have had the Bardon Professional Development Centre and 2 state schools sold off.
It was before the GFC – and the realisation of the need for water conservation and certainly no inkling of the kind of infra-structure building that de-sal plants require.
It was to solve short term money needs of our state government – at a time when Qld was probably raking in more money than at any time in its existence. (At a rate that Joh B-P would have never dreamed possible?)
If we are now talking of 4 de-sal plants, at $1billion each, what absurdities of gutting the public domain are we going to have thrust at us? Obviously de-sal plants will be built with publicly funded loans – and then privatized, as private corporations are far more ‘efficient’ than public utilities! Meaning? – we’ll pay twice.
We know how this government likes to trade with its corporate cronies – look at who benefited from the corporatization of power supply. (Did your bills go down?)
The sweat deal the Airtrain runs on and the Yungaba decision (sorry – it’s details are a state secret!) – the list of how we, the public, have been dudded seems to go on and on.
And the “Opposition” – they make Terrence Lewis’ “Joke” look slick!
But the lung fish and the other unique creatures in that river system thankfully don’t know such.
They’ve lived to swim for a little longer.
But we’ll all be drinking bottled water if we’re not dam careful!
But is using less water really that hard? Do all houses built on slabs still have all the plumbing hooking together immediately under the slab – ie hooking straight into the toilet? Thereby stopping any simple grey water solutions.
Gee I wish our public servants were allowed – encouraged – to be more creative. I fail to see that working out how to privatize everything has to be an essential part of their job criteria!
I think very little town water is being used on Brisbane gardens. Current consumption is about 150 litres per person per day, less than half before the restrictions a few years ago.
The State Government spent about $600 million on the Traveston project, bought about 500 properties and now owns about 14,000 hectares of land in the Mary Valley. Apparently it is going to be sold back to the original owners, if they want to buy. Some will, some have bought elsewhere and have moved on.
Traveston Stage 1 was to provide from memory 70,000ML per year as against 45,000 for the Tugun desal plant. Bligh reckons they will now build two Tugun capacity desal plants, one at Lytton, near the Port of Brisbane and one at Marcoola on the Sunshine Coast by 2017. Two more will be built by 2030, one at Bribie Island and a second at Tugun.
There has been no talk of using renewable power.
After a close call at the last election I thought Bligh might change her mind on Traveston, but it seems it didn’t even occur to her.
I heard Garrett interviewed on local radio. He was playing a very straight bat, made no judgements about the project except as it relates to his responsibilities, which are towards nationally endangered species.
I can’t see why this shouldn’t be taken at face value and Garrett given credit for a rational decision. Any speculation about political motives is just that – speculation.
The early comments suggest Peter Garrett is damned for blocking the dam, and would have been damned for letting it go ahead.
FFS, this is by far the most significant decision under federal environment laws since they came into being 10 years ago. The politically easy thing to do would have been to let the dam go ahead with 200 ‘mitigating’ measures.
Instead Garrett stood up and said it can’t be done – give the guy some credit.
No doubt Anna Bligh and crew will now say 2 or 3 desalination plants are the only alternative – even though they are dearer and more greenhouse intensive than other options – just to try to rub our noses in it.
The next battle against dumb and dumber options is just beginning, but at least some endangered species and wetlands have been preserved.
Well personally I give Garret almost no credit for this Andrew.
He is one of the most ineffective environment ministers we’ve had in recent years. I’m not sure what he believes.
It was as blindingly obviously wrong as the Gunn’s pulp mill proposal.
He finally was allowed to say no.
Uh-huh …
Well said Andrew Bartlett. Without a doubt some people simply want reality to fit into their preconceived notions, and so when Garret makes a worthy decision he is still derided because the decision doesn’t fit in with the ‘one of the worst environment ministers ever’ narrative.
And Fran Barlow if Garret is ‘the worst environment ministers in recent years’, would you mind naming the Howard ministers who were better and why?
Andrew, wetlands and endangered species preserved?
A nose-out-of-joint State Government could, for example, allow the farmers back in. It’s an existing use I believe (the Govt bought some of the farms but did not kick the farmers off). So, a miffed – or really cynical State Government could just allow the farmers to finish off the Lungfish and turtles etc by doing nothing in that area. Then when they ain’t no more of the fish because of the runoff from the farming activity, the Queensland Government can then apply to build the dam on the basis of ‘Fish? What fish?’
Garrett has only made the right move IFF he also moves to protect the catchment by NOT allowing any crown land be used for farming or subdivision in that area. Without that, this is a cynical exercise in delaying the demise of the lungfish until all present political actors are collecting their super.
All this hypocritical poncing on about the environment makes me ill (Not here on this site I hasten to add). It is merely middle class lifestylers wantint to preserve their nice rural lifestyles. Lungfish are an excuse and will now probably end up as fillets, figuratively at least.
Because Peter Garrett used to be rock star who in the 1980s sang songs with stirring lyrics, he is expected by some people to act like the editorial writer for Green Left Weekly. The fact that as Minister for the Environment he is restrained by statute in terms of the kinds of decisions he can make and the processes by which he males them, is neither here nor there. The further fact that he is a member of the Australian Labor Party – not the Greens or a far left party – is also neither here nor there.
Some people are very naive.
Garrett comes across to me as acting very much like a lawyer, strictly interpreting his brief and operating very carefully and consciously within it and not twisting it in favour of his presumed environmental values. For this he deserves some credit, in my view.
Marks, apparently many of the farmers sold their properties and then rented them back at token rents, in the hope that the project might fall over. I haven’t been there, but it is said to be magnificent farming country. One of the problems with dams is that they tend to drown some of the best country. I believe this was the case with the Paradise Dam on the Burnett.
We are going to need all the food production capacity we can find in the future (see the other thread) but hopefully with all the conditions that Garrett has already specified the repair the harm done by farming.
actually, the only successful lung fish breeders in that region in australia are confident that the dam wouldn’t affect them at all. The turtles are another ball o’ wax though.
Andrew #25, yess I probably was in the wrong frame of mind when I posted my first comment. Having said that, any cynicism on my part was and is not directed at Garrett, for reasons I stated here.
Andrew: ‘FFS, this is by far the most significant decision under federal environment laws since they came into being 10 years ago.’
Significant politically maybe, marking the beginning of the beginning of the end for Labor in Qld, but the most significant on environmental grounds? Surely not…
Letting Shell, Chevron and Exxon have open slather on Barrow Island, ‘Auatralia’s Ark’, doesn’t rate?
In already sucessfully elected Greens politician rachel siewert’s words: “The Environmental Protection Authority originally recommended against this plan, due to the probable environmental harm it could cause. If this expansion goes ahead, the impact on the island’s rare species, which have survived development to date, will be devastating.’ ‘The WA Environmental Protection Authority, who say Barrow Island is home to 24 species that exist nowhere else’.
Then there’s the aspect of the decision effectively turning a blind eye to the fact that the project will create the worlds biigest CO2 bubble even though
‘The Gorgon site .. is scarred by geologic fault lines. Since 1986, there were eight tremors of a magnitude greater than 3 within 100 kilometers of Barrow Island,.. A 1906 earthquake about 400 kilometers east of Barrow Island had an estimated magnitude of 7.5, probably the largest recorded temblor around Australia’
Changing land use patterns of the Mary valley, into probably smaller acreage real estate developments, intead of farms, now that the State Government owns the land, and needs the money, is more significant than that decision of Mr Garrett’s?
Or how about the overturning of the ‘no new uranium mines’ policy when he gave the Beverley 4 mile the go-ahead, signalling a likely all clear for BHP’s wishes for a WA uranium mine and the expansion of Olympic Dam into the worlds biggest open cut uranium mine, ( with a gigantic power and water imposte, sucking up any geothermal energy produced by Petratherm, )? When we get more dust storms across the continent, even to NZ, after having blown over that gigantic patch of exposed yellow cake, and feather dusters all over the eastern seaboard set off geiger counters, and people are breathing it, well the Traveston decision will be seen as a feint.
As another already sucessfully elected Greens politician, scott Ludlum, pointed out:
‘Peter Garrett’s claims that the new Beverley Four Mile uranium mine will be world’s best practice are unfounded and border on delusional,..This acid injection uranium mine will dump liquid radioactive waste into regional groundwater body and the Minister is trying to argue this won’t damage the environment..In an age of water scarcity, acid in-situ leach mining should be illegal in Australia, end of story. We need only look at the contamination legacy of the nearby Beverley mine, to get an idea of just how badly Peter Garrett has misjudged this application’
Sure the Traveston decision is important, and the Mary is real purty, and it’ll probably play well in leafy inner city suburban booths, but do we really need more trash FFS hyperbole?
Are we sure that Anna Bligh is as pissed off as she’s making out? She’s not fighting on re the federal cabinet decision, after all. If it was a politically unpopular decision within Qld, she gets out of it without admitting error on the part of the state party. If the next plan is more ’spenny, she blames Chrome Dome, who doesn’t care because this decision looks good for him as a NSW greenish ALP senator, and probably does federal labor some poll type favours as well. Assuming there is some other more environmentally friendly way to collect some H2O, everyone wins.
Well he’ll get credit for 2 desalination plants now. They should name them after him.
You’ve beaten me to it, Sean, but I reckon Garrett (well, Federal Cabinet) have done Bligh a huge favour. I don’t know whether or not she realises it, but her rhetoric on the TV news would indicate she doesn’t.
Hooray for common sense
Andrew,
FFS, this is by far the most significant decision under federal environment laws since they came into being 10 years ago. The politically easy thing to do would have been to let the dam go ahead with 200 ‘mitigating’ measures.
Instead Garrett stood up and said it can’t be done – give the guy some credit.
He did make the right decision and stand up; he does deserve credit for this decision.
But you are failing to acknowledge that the reason Garret isn’t getting due praise is because this one correct decision is a lonely island in a sea of others, where, faced with projects that had just as many triggers under the EPBC that he should have rightly rejected them, he hasn’t – the Gunns Pulp Mill and Barrow Island probably being the two most stark examples.
Brian –
Garrett comes across to me as acting very much like a lawyer, strictly interpreting his brief and operating very carefully and consciously within it and not twisting it in favour of his presumed environmental values. For this he deserves some credit, in my view.
That would be a logical conclusion if it wasn’t for the fact that the EPBC is significantly flawed. Not much use in an environment minister following his brief to the letter if he’s got the background and (allegedly) the smarts to know the brief is built on poor law. A good lawyer would take the brief for the defendendant (the environment) and wring the maximum out of the law that he can, exploiting every loophole in favour of his client. Garrett ignores the flaws in the law that cripple the brief. I wouldn’t want him defending me!
Where is all this animus about Garrett and the Gunns pulp mill coming from? The mill was approved by Malcolm Turnbull in October 2007. Garrett only approved a variation in one of the conditions. He doesn’t has the statutory power to cancel Turnbull’s approval.
Tim,
while you are correct re: Turnbull’s larger role, Garrett:
has approved the permits to allow the pulp mill to be built even though Gunns has not completed the marine effluent modelling they are required to doo.
So even though Gunns has not completed, submitted or satisfied Garrett as environment minister regarding the critical impact on marine matters covered by the EPBC, he has permitted the clearing of the site (some 70ha – which had plenty of problems on its own, not least Aboriginal Heritage issues), and sent rather a mixed message, to say the least. Why would you as environment minister approve permits to allow a mill to be built when you haven’t even received information about its impact on the marine matters covered by the EPBC.
Garrett had all sorts of dark words to say when Shadow minister about Turnbull’s shoddy assessment, and then continued in the same vein.
Not to mention that while in the Shadow portfolio he obediently parrotted federal labour support for the project.
Decision to block the Traveston Dam no more than what should have been expected of a Minister for the Environment
Whilst Peter Garrett’s decision to stop the building of the Traveston Dam is to be heartily applauded, he did no more than what should be expected of a Federal Minister for the Environment when faced with such an environmentally reckless proposal.
This is the second significant occasion, that I can recall, on which Garrett has acted in favour of the environment, that is, in other words, treated his statutory obbligations seriously. The other occasion was when he blocked the Bligh Government’s similarly environmentally reckless plan to build a coal loader in Shoalwater Bay.
Garrett’s overall dismal environmental record
On every other significant issue that I can recall, he has acted against the environment.— Uranium mining, the Dredging of Port Philip Bay the Tasmanian Pulp Mill, the Car Rally in the environmentally sensitive Tweed and Kyogle Shires, failure to act to protect the Murray Darling system, the building of a massive deslanation plant on Victoria’s Bass Coast, the North South pipleline, the overall massive expansion of Australia’s coal exports, not to mention his failure to take a visible stance against the Federal Governent’s reckless plans to grow our populaiton, etc., etc.
If Garrett’s decision is truly a sign of him changing heart back to become the environmentailst he once claimed to be, then we would explect to see him, from now on to act consistently in favour of the environment and to find ways to reverse previous decisions harmful to the environment.
I hope to be proven wrong, but I am not expecting that to occur.
If I am right, then it would be more accurate to conclude that Garrett’s decision against the Traveston Dam was the result of a political calculation concerning how much he needs to do for the environment in order to retain any political credibility.
The Save the Mary River Group had no plan B
One alarming aspect of this controversy is that the Save the Mary River Group had no strategy for dealing with an adverse decision from Peter Garrett.
Environmentalists should never put themselves in a position where they have to virtually beg of our political representatives to do the right thing. If the Minister for the Environment does not fear environmental groups such as the Save the Mary Group and does not go out of his way to meet their reasonable demands, then they are not doing their job properly.
Prior to that Save the Mary River Group’s principle strategy was to campaign for the Liberal National Party (LNP) and against the Labor Government at the 2009 state elections, thereby alienating many environmentalists who had good reason to be concerned about some of the LNP’s poor environmental policies.
The Save the Mary Group explicitly damned the Greens in their election literature for their reluctance to give their preferences to the LNP when the Greens were (for all their considerable faults) at least as consistently agains the dam as the LNP.
With the re-election of the Bligh Government, and a cross-bench not holding the balance of power, that strategy got them nowhere.
In the 2008 local Government elections they failed to back the Integrity Gympie team, which was committed to fully utilising the resources of the Gympie council to fight the dam, and, instead allowed candidates who were prepared only to pay lip service to the fight against the dam, to win.
Astonishingly, in a referendum held in Toowoomba in 2006, anti-dam campaigners, together with the Queensland Greens, campaigned, ultimately unsuccessfully against community activists for the imposition of recycled water by the City Council. As a result, relations between them and a group of people in South East Queensland, who would naturally have been sympathetic towards them have been poisoned ever since, including during the critical 2009 Queensland State elections.[1]
At the moment, the Save the Mary River Group can count themselves very lucky that, this time, Peter Garrett’s political calculations came down on the side of the environment.
James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent candidate fortruth, democracy and economic justice,Australian Federal elections, 2010
Footnotes
1. For their part, anti-water-recycling and anti-fluoridation campaigners largely reciprocated the Save the Mary Group’s counterproductive stance, and this appears to have also harmed, rather than helped them at the ballot box.
Of course the NIMBYs who prevented this dam from going ahead would never use water from any public dams themselves, would they? They would of course refuse to use water from Borumba, on principle … wouldn’t they?
And should they visit or go to live in Brisbane, they will choose not to avail themselves of that city’s water.
In all fairness, they should now volunteer to assist the government to find a solution to the problem of providing sufficient water to meet the demands of South East Queensland.
myriad74, I bow to your superior knowledge in these matters.
daggett, I’m not sure whether it was the Save the Mary group but I heard that someone was planning a high court challenge, the purpose of which would have been to hold the project up in the courts until Bligh was defeated at the next election, which she surely will be.
I understand that at least one landowner sold with a buy-back clause in his contract if the dam didn’t go ahead.
BTW I noticed that daily consumption is now 137 litres per person per day, down from 150 after the recent rain. That probably represents how much is being used on gardens these days. There are plenty of drought resistant plants that will grow in Brisbane.
I just posted the following comment to the Courier Mail story “Anna Bligh’s $3bn water blowout after Traveston Decision”:
I see Anna Bligh has likened herself to Eleanor Roosevelt:
“Anna Bligh defies Traveston dam fallout”
Of course, Bligh is only strong when it comes to trampling on the rights of ordinary people. She’s as ’strong’ as a new-born kitten when it comes to standing up to property developers, land speculators and mining companies.
—
myriad74,
I read the Anna Bligh had also (correctly) pointed out the inconsistency between Garrett’s decision on the Pulp Mill and his decision on the dam:
Nevertheless, I find an inconsistent Minister for the Environment preferably to one who is consistently against the environment.
—
Brian,
I also remember hearing of plans to mount a high court challenge, so, technically they did have a “Plan B” after all, but it was a Plan B with almost no chance of success, going from past experience.
Quite a few people have incurred enormous expenses as a result of failed court chanllenges. Earlier this year many of us were moved to contribute to the fund to pay Bob Brown’s unbelieveable $250,000 costsw which were awarded against him as a result of a failed court challenge.
Kate Milne, a Greens Tweed Shire Councillor faces cost of $30,000 as a result of her failed legal bid to stop the Repco car rally in the environmentlly sensitive Tweed adn Kygle Shires held in September.
Others who have had large costs awarded against them as a result of failed legal challenges include the Blue Wedges group opposed to the environmentally reckless deredging of Port Phillip Bay (as mentioned above) and the YOur Water YOur Say Group who attempted to stop the deslaination plant on Victoria’s Bass Coast (also mentioned above).
Seq @ 41
I gather by your post your a supporter of the Dam? Anyway, by your logic I would assume the Dam supporters will now, on principle, will not avail themselves of any dairy or agricultural products from the area, or the surrounding areas, or areas related to the surrounding areas. You know, what’s good for the goose. Good luck with that.
Apparently what was at stake was half the remaining dairy production of Queensland.
I heard Kate Molloy, the former Labor member for Noosa who defied the Beattie Govt on the dam and was duly disendorsed, says that Anna owes her an apology and she should be endorsed to run for the seat again next election.
Meanwhile there is going to be NIMBY resistance to desal plants at Tugun and elsewhere. I heard on talkback radio that you can feel the vibrations of the Tugun plant from 500 metres away. Tugun was designed and built in a helluva hurry as Armageddon loomed. So I don’t know whether it was just bad design or whether it is a normal downside of desal plants.
The other shoe has predictably fallen. Pay up Ruddy, if you want to keep SE Queensland.
From Craig Mc’s link:
You have to be a bit careful about the figures being thrown around. I understand the 150,000ML is the figure for Traveston Stage 2 which was planned for a couple of decades hence. The immediate comparison is between Traveston Stage 1 which was going to cost $1.8 billion and yield 70,000ML as against two desal plants which will cost $2.4 billion (2007 figures) and yield 90,000ML.
That’s not a humungous increase in the price of water, as we are being led to believe.
In addition to higher capital costs desal comes with higher operating costs for power, maint etc.
The real argument for desal is that it is climate change proof. There s no guarantee that enough rain will keep falling in the mary river catchment.
John D, of course you are right about operating costs. It’s also true about no guarantee of rain in the Mary catchment. At present it is apt to rain there quite regularly, but it hasn’t always been so. I recall seeing an analysis of the rainfall in the various catchments over the last century and there was a 10 year period (either the 1930s or 1940s) when it rained less in the Mary than in the Wivenhoe catchment.
People may recall that not long ago the Hinze Dam behind the Gold Coast was practically empty and they were pumping water from the Wivenhoe. Then a few years ago it rained half a metre in one day and has been raining there ever since. These micro-climate patterns develop, last for years and then suddenly change.
The strategy behind recycling was to have a greater proportion of our water needs met from climate-independent sources, but that got stuffed when the Bligh Govt got the wobbles over actually adding it to the supply on a regular basis.