Melbourne running out of water: What to do?

[trainspotter]

Fabulous waterway and the actual DAM itself is tiny ! More water than they know what to do with. Completely untapped (excuse the pun) natural resource. The Dam is 335 metres in width holding Lake Argyle's usual storage volume of 5,797,000 megalitres litres of H2O.

 

[Gspot]

I know what they will do.
Set up a new committee that will look into why Melbourne has no water, and write a nice glossy report on 'Our Future Water Supply', all for say $15 million. Then the government can say we are urgently working on the problem, and worry about it again after the next election.

 

[Absolutely]

You can have our desalination plant. We don't need it here in Sydney anymore.

 

[Prospector]

This is a picture of what our stupid SA Govt is building across the stretch of the River Murray to stop acidification. Bloody bureacrats did this with no consultation at all.

Courtesy of ABC.net.au

The Aboriginal Murray Flag, River Murray flag and Australian Flag are flying at half mast in protest. The land at the back is Hindmarsh Island. At the forefront is Clayton Bay. Our house is on the 'wrong side' of the weir, meaning that we will have acid soils. Land value has dropped 25% from last year.

And the video to match:
http://contribute.abc.net.au/_Matthew-Abraham-in-Clayton/video/737473/32422.html

contribute.abc.net.au/_Matthew-Abraham-in-Clayton/video/737473/32422.html

 

[Agentm]

There used to be a toal ban on logging within 200 metres of all forrest waterways in Victoria. This was reduced to 100 metres during the Krennett Government regime.

Anyway if there is no more rain coming we need more and bigger coal driven desal plants. And if we live under the ground we wont drink as much and be out of the road of the loggers too.

lol

the loggers will have to compete with the coming fire storm..

we are told the summer ahead is to be like black saturday on steroids

 

[Trembling Hand]

T/H.

Hell we're tough!

Yep ya must be.

Don't get me wrong I love S.A. , surfin Yorks, Ceduna, KI, Port Elliot. Luv em'.

But little old Adelaide

 

[MrBurns]

I think there's a good chance we'll be in real trouble and the State Labor Govt under grinning Brumby is useless.
They cant do anything, stuffed up public transport, cant look after the police force, ridiculous land tax and no water plan.
I have a water filter and I recommend everyone get one because as soon as the news hits that the water is no longer pure you wont be able to get one anywhere.

 

[Sean K]

A nuclear power plant in South Werribee, or that island next to Philip could be used as a desalination plant also, but thanks to our stupidity we can't have nuclear power in our own back yard.

Fine to sell uranium to others of course. Even our future enemies.

Let's just keep burning coal....

And have no water.

 

[basilio]

I did get around to considering some of the drastic short term measures we could implement to save of skins. Any thoughts ?

1) Investigate and organise tankers to bring water from Tasmania to replenish our dams. Is this possible? Practical? How much water can be delivered? What infrastructure will be required? Are there available vessels? Can we book them?

2) Investigate every large scale water using business and see how effectively they can reduce/reuse/recyle water. If absolutely necessary consider closing down some businesses if we believe drinking water deserves to be ahead of business water.

3) How can we reduce the amount of water that goes up the chimneys and out the rivers in our power stations? Is there an engineering solution within 4-6 months ? Perhaps even a short term one? (Close down a coal fired power station ? Replace it with gas ? )

4) Have a mass building campaign to store water off all the largest buildings in Melbourne. What little rain we get we need to hold.

5) Similarly attempt to hold and store any storm run off. Given that spring is our last realistic time for rain short of summer storms this and the previous item need to be a very quick priority.

6) Investigate and instigate projects to reduce evaporation from all dams. I understand there is an oily film which largely reduces evaporation.

7) Have a mass education program with the objective of reducing domestic and commercial water use to previously unseen levels. Remember the water we save today we will be drinking in May..

8) Back up the previous action with the provision of instant remote water monitoring capabilities to businesses and households. I understand these have been available and fitted for at least 12 months. They need to be rolled out. Start with the highest water users.

9) Get Federal support for this national emergency. It will need some overriding legislation and some very direct funds.

10) Finally ensure that we don’t irrevocably destroy our river and environment systems in this crisis through taking too much water out. Otherwise we create a situation from which we simply cannot recover. (i.e losing all of Melbs trees…)

 

[son of baglimit]

ive seen plenty of water tanks being delivered around melbourne lately - once the fools realise it aint gonna rain, watch for the hoses to be turned on to fill the tanks. absolute certainty.

i had mine delivered 2 months ago - it rained 6 days straight - filled it, and barely rained since.

the pipeline from the north to feed the upper murray and all surrounding districts (yes australias food bowl) - theres a stimulus package.

 

[MrBurns]

the pipeline from the north to feed the upper murray and all surrounding districts (yes australias food bowl) - theres a stimulus package.

Yes why didnt the little bastard do that instead of sending out biliions in the freeking post.

 

[Trevor_S]

Forget the Amazon. Pipeline from the Ord River Scheme would do it. The scheme created Lake Argyle, which is Australia's largest dam, covering an area of 741 km ².

Don't have to go that far, the Burdekin Dam (SW of Townsville) had more then 1 Syn Harb (volume of Sydney Harbour) a day flowing over the spillway for months this year... and last year.. and the year before... and ...

They keep talking about building the wall higher.

Correction, that's 1 Syn Harb every 5 HOURS in 2009, my photo above was from 2008.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/06/2484820.htm

So much water is spilling out of the Burdekin Falls dam in north Queensland that it would fill Sydney Harbour every five hours and there are fears more rain could cause widespread flooding in the region.

The Burdekin is the 4th largest River in Australia.

 

[Trembling Hand]

Whats all the fuss about. its raining.

 

[ajjack]

Seems its raining everywhere except Melb. catchment area.

Huey wake up!

 

[trainspotter]

WHy do they build dams where it doesn't rain?

 

[Ghetto23]

How about you build a canal from NW WA? Barnett has some great ideas about this.

Treating waste water would be the best idea - apart from the stigma it creates...I recall seeing that they can make it safer than regular tap water these days...

 

[Smurf1976]

No need to worry about the Amazon or even Lake Argyle when there's more water much closer to Melbourne.

Lake Argyle - annual flow at the dam is 4,400 GL

Tasmanian hydro-electric scheme annual discharges:

Derwent = 3138 GL
Gordon = 3271 GL
South Esk = 1945 GL
Mersey-Forth = 1936 GL
Pieman = 4907 GL
King = 1205 GL

Now, Hobart uses about 0.6% of the Derwent scheme's water for its urban supply (and we don't bother with meters or restrictions...) with the rest running straight down the river into the sea. That source alone could easily supply ALL of the water used by Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth combined.

Now all we need is a Bass Strait pipeline. We already have a gas pipe, power cable and 3 fibre optic links across it, now we just need a water pipeline.

In practical terms, running it from the Pieman catchment (probably straight from Mackintosh or Bastyan dams) would be a realistic way to do it and such an idea was at one time proposed.

Alternatively, at the 100% certain chance of seriously upsetting the greens, we could build 3 new dams on the Arthur River and make 2800 GL available from that source while also reducing Tasmania's use of fossil fuels for electricity from 11% of total generation down to 5%. That water source would be very conveniently located for a Tas - Vic pipeline.

Tankers are another option worth looking at. Higher ongoing costs than a pipe but it could be put in place fairly quickly.

 

[Happy]

What would happen if a city of 4 million people ran out of water ?

...

Above all I would close city gates and encourage some departures, which probably would be happily taken up as many older Melburnians migrate to QLD anyway to warm up their older bones after retirement.

I could also mention halting immigration, but this seems to be like a red flag to some so I won't.

 

[disarray]

I could also mention halting immigration, but this seems to be like a red flag to some so I won't.

there shall be no discussion of population management or sustainability for human beings. none.

WE MUST GROW!!!! GROW I TELL YOU!!!!

 

[Smurf1976]

3) How can we reduce the amount of water that goes up the chimneys and out the rivers in our power stations? Is there an engineering solution within 4-6 months ? Perhaps even a short term one? (Close down a coal fired power station ? Replace it with gas ? )

Not really an option in the available timeframe for a lot of reasons (I'll explain if anyone really does want to know...).

But we could shift a significant amount of generation away from Vic in favour of NSW and Qld coal-fired plant very quickly. We could have it done tonight (literally tonight) quite easily from a technical perspective.

Look on the positive side though, at least things are becoming consistent in Victoria. Trains don't work when it's hot. Power doesn't work when it's hot. Now there will be no water either. At least it's consistent, predictable failure to plan rather than a one-off...