End of Wet Season

[Feral]

ok, in a few days ( end of February) it will officially be the end of the wet season in SE Qld. How much screaming do you reckon there will be from various places about the lack of water in our dams?

For those of you not in the know, SE Qld has 3 main water storage dams, all of which are located on the north and north west of Brisbane. There has been little rain in the Dam catchments, but plenty elsewhere this summer. (Well above average fall at my place for instance).

The Authorities have been moaning about lack of rain, but done nothing about building more dams or desalination plants etc etc. Instead they are slowly ruining businesses that rely on consumers being able to water gardens etc etc such as nursery's and landscapers by slowly introducing water restrictions. The dams have slowly fallen from about 70% capacity to just over 30% in the last 3 years, even though rainfall has been right in the middle of the expected rate of falls (Brisbane's Modal average is 900 to 1100mm a year - IE the rain fall that occurs most often in a year, not the average of all years).

They reckon when it drops below 30% they will totally ban hosing all together, which will of course be the end of any business which has held on so far. Apparently this sort of move in Sydney a few years ago put thousands and thousands of people out of work.

The really stupid part of it is that they have introduced the same restrictions in areas that do not have a problem, for instance in the Redland shire, (Leslie Harrison dam) they have the restrictions in place, but their dam is at capacity, and overfolws with every rain event! The Gold Coast is not much differnet, But have they decided to build a pipeline from either the Redlands or Gold Coast dams to move some of the water to the near empty dams? No that would be sensible!

Build some infrastructure ya boofheads! (preferably with fish stocking!)

[finga64]

hear, hear Feral

The all knowing boofheads have let how many people move into the area and how many subdivisions have been built with how many houses and most importantly how many dams, sewerage treatment plants, major arterial roads, hospitals, etc, etc have been built to cater for all these people.

It is pretty sad when you get the pollies saying to get used to water restrictions and the days of the kids playing under the hose will be no more and the fountain in the city can't be used. What would the pollies say to wage restrictions??

The infrasructure that was built 20 years ago was only designed to cater for a finite number of people and now that crtical population level has doubled....no wonder there's no water. Don't have to be Dr Karl to figure that one.


Bring back the dynamic duo Joe and Flow ...and Rus...and all the other mates. At least things got done then no matter what people thought about the Government of the day.

What about the price of petrol now. The price of crude is way down (below 60c) but the price at the pump isn't. Obviously Pistal Pete doesn't fill up the limo every week like the rest of us usually do on a payday (Thursday) when the servo's put the price up 10c/litre. And they say there's no price fixing. Maybe in LaLa land there isn't??

[Lone_Wolf]

The really stupid part of it is that they have introduced the same restrictions in areas that do not have a problem, for instance in the Redland shire, (Leslie Harrison dam) they have the restrictions in place, but their dam is at capacity, and overfolws with every rain event! The Gold Coast is not much differnet, But have they decided to build a pipeline from either the Redlands or Gold Coast dams to move some of the water to the near empty dams? No that would be sensible

Good point Feral. It seems in our current climate that this rain falls mainly on the coastal regions and simply doesn't make it inland to these catchments areas such as Somerset. I think the pipelines are in the "pipeline."

[rough_shag]

I live in Caboolture shire and the local govt has taken 50kilolitres off of us and introduced a quarterly water charge!!-giving us less water and charging us more.
The ridiculous growth in this area has been unchecked and allowed to go on for years now-no doubt not many if any have been knocked back.It's a winfall of revenue for local govt with thousands of new ratepayers and water users-each new house would use what? perhaps 300-400kilolitres per year multiplied by the number of new residences and it's not hard to see why there's a water crisis is it?.
I suspect that current govt's are reluctant to dedicate funding etc to a water supply project which will not show results/be built during their term in office,it is easier to take the money now and leave the hard work to a future govt.
Australia has a tiny population compared to the rest of the world's and yet at almost all levels of basic requirements we are struggling and allowing ourselves to be used by overseas economies.Hospitals,schools,water supplies,employment-all under the gun continually when we should easily be all wealthy considering the natural wealth of the countryand our small population-why aren't we?If a country like Sth Korea which was almost totally destroyed 50yrs ago can recover and become one of the worlds most dynamic economies producing the worlds biggest shipping industry from scratch why can't we achieve the same level of success?- 25 yrs of over regulated beaurocracy and incompetent government is the answer.Just witness the way in which our elected officials bicker and argue like a bunch of immature schoolboys in parliament and it becomes quite obvious why we are struggling with even the basic necessities of civilization.Jace.

[blaze]

ever heard of tanks, how much rain falls on your roof each year and you take noresponability for it and let it run down the storm water system. store your own water
cheers
blaze

[Girella]

You're right Blaze we all need to take some level of responsibility for our own water supply.

But Feral raises some very valid points :

If we haven't received enough water to even maintain or dam levels this summer then the chances are remote that we ever will.

All levels of government have been happy to rake off their share of revenue
from the development boom but simply cry poor when it comes to providing the necessary infrastructure to support it.

There's more to the water shortage than lack of rainfall.

PK

[Girella]

By the way, the next level of restrictions are due in March.

Does anyone know whether flushing of outboards will still be allowed ?


PK

[fish2eat]

I think that in 20 or 30 years, the next generation will look back in horror at the wastefulness of our generation

" they actually used to wash their paths and water their gardens with prime quality drinking water????" unbelievable !!

[MADKEEN]

I grow up on tank water and could not believe that in Brisbane just a couple of years ago it was against the law to have a rain water tank and when i move to carindale 11 years ago the waste with people watering the grass footpath. What i see is a real problem is we keep taking the water of the land and therefore trying to turn Australia into a Great big bowl of sand. WE have to start to think out side of the Square. We're an ISLAND.

[Feral]

I am wondering about the new push for tanks in SE qld, apart from being a very expensive way to get water, ($1000 for a tank big enough to store $3 worth of water, and thats not including a pump), they seem to be only encoraging its connection to washing machines or toilets, does that mean they still discorage using it for drinking water?

I am very water frugal, I also have a home sewerage treatment plant, so not one drop of water leaves my property, it all goes into the yard. But you can not keep squeezing the level of water use down indefinately, as someone pointed out they have built no infrastructure for over 20 years, and the population has doubled.

Why shouldn't any Tom Dick or Harry, in what is suposed to be a first world country, be able to water his grass or a few trees or even a vegie garden when ever he needs or wants to?

Of course you might not get a chance to as often as you like, what with the 5 hour queues to see a doctor, or the 3 hour comute 40k's to work, or worrying about your kiddies getting heat stroke as school, coz water is not the only infrastructure that has been poorly neglected!

[szopen]

I will give you an answer.

Unless their next election really depends on something they will not do anything about that.

On the other side.
It is only in times of difficulty when people (not politicians) get worried about something enough to do anything about that.

[Bros]

Build more dams where!. I think you will find out that there are very few dam sites left in Queensland and what is the good of a dam if it doesn't rain. The rain that falls is only in small amounts and ends up in the soil and does not run off.

Recycle is the first step with industry that is using fresh water for cooling be made to change over to recycled water. Power stations are the most wasteful with cooling water as huge quanties of it ends up in the atmosphere. Changing to recycled water can't happen overnight so the

I saw a show a few years ago that said that Australia could only support a population of 12 Million due to it's low rainfall and lack of good agricultural soil, they might be right.

[Feral]

Got a work mate who used to work for Water Resources. He reckons all the dams built up to the present were surveyed in the 30's, there has been no investigation of new sites since then. Dunno if that means they surveyed all possible site back then or not.

If they cant build dams, then desalination will be the way to go.

The problem with recycled water for industry is generally that industry needs much cleaner water than we do, many industrial complexes have their own water treatment plants to further treat the town water supply. "Recycled water" is not constant in contaminants like tap water is, so it is very hard to treat it to the level required.


I would suggest a better use for recycled water would be all new estates should contain a recycled water reticulation system for watering yards washing cars etc etc. Either that or it all be pumped into an artifical dam setup where the sheer volume of it would give a reasonably constant quality of water that business could reliably know how to treat for there use.

If they did that, they could boost the supply by allowing storm water to be fed into the sewerage system, massively increasing the water available.

Of course all this costs money, so pollies will (eventually) just build new dams. There are plenty of undammed river systems on the coast of Queensland, they will just have to add pipelines..

[Graham_N_Roberts]

So we keep on building dams until all rivers no longer reach the sea? When do we say enough is enough?

It may well be more sensible to treat the cause rather than the illness itself .... ie. it's better not to smoke than to treat the consequences.

Lets spread out the population, reduce emissions, leave more trees in place and release the technology to do just that.

Any pollies on this thread with the testicular fortitude to do it?

[vanurose]

Figa
I agree with every word you said
Well done
Can't wait to oust this creep in the next elections
Cheers Rose