Royce Millar The Age Feature September 4, 2008
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29/09/08 Planning for a flood Peter Fisher The Age Opinion
25/09/08 Water policy is based on flawed figures Kenneth Davidson The Age, Opinion Our highlighting
12/09/08 Dry climate makes it east v west Peter Ker , The Age our highlighting
07/09/08 Radioactive River? Blue Wedges Links
06/09/08 Dredge plume spreads, seal dies , Peter Ker, The Age
04/09/08 Empty promises? Royce Millar The Age Feature
02/09/08 Study raps state's farm water caps, Royce Millar The Age Feature our highlighting
WHEN Robie MacDonald, a leading Canadian meteorologist, spoke to The Age from the North Pole in August he was taken aback by the accelerating rate of the Arctic ice melt. He was voicing a growing anxiety among scientists about the pace of climate change, with key indicators of planet's geophysical system running ahead of the modelling by as much as 50 years.
Across the way from his base, huge icebergs have crashed into the ocean off the west coast of Greenland. There has been a 30% increase in the melting of its ice sheet between 1979 and 2007, and in 2007, the melt was 10% larger than in any previous year. This is the stuff of a rise in sea level.
It is well to remember these things with Ross Garnaut's final report on how Australia should respond to climate change due to be submitted to the federal Government tomorrow.
There are other facts to remember as well. The United Nations Climate Panel said last year that a rise in sea level could be 80 centimetres by 2100 unless carbon dioxide levels are reined in, but it had not fully factored in the melting ice of Greenland and Antarctica nor of the world's glaciers. James Hansen, the respected American climate scientist makes that adjustment. "I would bet $20 to a doughnut that people will be beating a retreat in my lifetime, and I am 66, unless we decide to phase out coal and do some other logical things."
Fortunately, Victorian authorities seem prepared to wear some of the tough implications of climate change with VCAT overturning South Gippsland Shire's approval of a six-dwelling planning permit application on the Toora coast. The tribunal conceded that climate change "is still in an evolutionary phase" in the planning process, and that there was "a reasonably foreseeable risk" from storm severity that would make the proposed developments unacceptable.
Curiously, it did not invoke a similar precautionary approach when it refused to overturn planning approval for a gas plant upgrade near Marlo. The proposed residential development at Toora was apparently more risky than the processing and storage of liquid hydrocarbons and monoethylene glycol on a low dune next to a lagoon on a flood plain with only frontal dunes between the plant and the ocean.
This is a stark reminder that potential threats to infrastructure are yet to be given the same attention in terms of risk management as housing.
So far, few if any commentators have made a connection with what still seems a remote possibility to most of us — the threat to Victoria's core infrastructure from a sea level rise and storm surge.
Oil refineries, steelworks, smelters, and a power station, are among those at risk.
This month hurricane Ike not only destroyed Galveston but also knocked out key infrastructure in the region — 12 of 31 refineries in Texas and Louisiana, with a total production capacity of 3 million barrels and they are still shut down. But wild weather isn't the exclusive preserve of places such as the Gulf Coast, as demonstrated in Melbourne in July.
At the back end of the urban water cycle, much of the state's waste water is treated at or very near the coast. These plants are where recycled water is fed into pipe networks supplying housing estates, parks, golf courses and market gardens.
And, with the building of desalination plants, governments have in one stroke shifted the centre of gravity of future drinking water supplies away from the hills and towards the coast. Thus, not only could water supplies be exposed to the vagaries of future rainfall in our water catchments but also to the wildcard of storm surge and increasing sea levels.
In short, much of Victoria's heavy public and industrial infrastructure on which business-as-usual economic growth is predicated could be under a Canutian siege in the years ahead and facing crippling insurance premiums.
Certainly, along Victoria's rural coastline a managed retreat could be tried like that at Wallasea in England. But once in the midst of our cities, towns and sea change communities, a mishmash of civil engineering and legal issues arise.
At this point, threats of legal action can cause municipalities to back off development restrictions. Nevertheless, the Toora decision should provide steel for councils to take a stronger stand.
Farsighted leadership from state and Commonwealth governments is vital. There will be tough funding and compensatory decisions to be made as well as controversial requirements to establish statutory setbacks.
In the meantime, John Brumby is looking for Commonwealth money for a "retreat and protect" strategy — including moving towns to higher ground and undertaking engineering works to hold back rising sea levels.
A new planning policy being devised by the Victorian Coastal Council designating vast new areas as flood prone is a welcome start, but coasts aren't just about beach houses and speculative development. Nor, for that matter, are rural towns. They are often the historic site of the infrastructure that has made possible the very existence of the nearby cities and their future expansion.
Dr Peter Fisher is a climate change adaptation specialist. He co-ordinated a climate change risk assessment — one of the first in Australia — for Port Phillip City Council.
Dismantling the old Board of Works has had disastrous consequences.
THE wheels have fallen off the Brumby Government's rationale for spending $4 billion on a desalination plant at Wonthaggi and the north-south pipeline and so supply Melbourne with an additional 225 gigalitres of water.
In March I wrote that the need to generate these additional supplies was based on water projections so flawed that that they bordered on the ludicrous — or the downright dishonest. Mathematician and science teacher Neil Rankin produced a critique of the Government's projections on behalf of the Kilcunda Your Water Your Say action group, which showed that even without restrictions on consumption, the excess of supply would be 60 to 100% by 2016.
We knew in March that the official water forecasts were badly flawed. They were based on running a regression through the three drought years from 2004 to 2006. Statistical analysis worthy of the name would have run a regression curve through at least 10 years — which is what Rankin did.
Instead we have bad government. It didn't start with the Bracks, Brumby or Kennett governments. The rot was established innocently enough with the decision of the Cain government to break up the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works on the grounds that it was an unaccountable QANGO. This was the de facto planning authority for Melbourne. It decided where the most expensive infrastructure (sewerage and water) went and the developers were forced to follow.
When the MMBW was split up into Melbourne Water and three retailers, its engineering and planning skills and its corporate memory were blown away and the planning function was in effect transferred by the politicians to the developers and the big end of town.
Little wonder we have disasters such as the Brooklands Green estate development in Cranbourne. But at least what is going on here cannot remain hidden. Not so with water — the stench isn't so obvious.
The water debate has been starved of the facts a good government confident of its policies would ensure were put into the public domain.
Thanks to the efforts of some retired engineers from the MMBW, we now know that the rainfall figures, as distinct from the forecasts used to justify the desalination plant, were wrong. The water map sourced to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and published in the Government's Our water our future — and reproduced in DSE evidence to the parliamentary enquiry into Melbourne's water supplies — purported to show that the rainfall in much of Melbourne's water catchment area in 2007-08 area was the lowest on record.
Cross-checking the map with the bureau's water records (going back more than 140 years in some cases) show these claims were misleading. The evidence undermines DSE claims that rainfall in the catchment area is continuing to decrease. It reinforces Rankin's methodology.
Given the importance of the issue to the taxpayer, the future direction and control of Victoria's water supplies and the additional stress the proposal presents for Murray Goulburn irrigators, it is inconceivable that the DSE, with all its resources, did not go back and check the original data before publishing its misleading map.
But there is prima facie evidence that any data that would undermine the Government's pre-determined policy that Victoria must have a desalination plant and the north-south pipeline would be ignored.
How else to explain the DSE forecasts of a Melbourne water crisis by 2010, which showed the projection of water supplies was based on inflows to four reservoirs (the Thomson, Upper Yarra, O'Shannassy and Maroondah) and excluded inflows to the Yan Yean and the Sugarloaf reservoirs that add up to more than 50 gigalitres or 20% of greater Melbourne's annual supply.
The conclusion is unavoidable: Melbourne will have plenty of water in the future, even before it considers cheap options such an aquifer injection, Gippsland river diversions, rainwater tanks or recycling.
The charge of dishonest dealings with the public is difficult to avoid. As we have seen, when it suited the Government's case, the records for the three drought years in the Melbourne catchment area were used in preference to the 10 years preferred by Rankin and good science.
So, to be consistent, why didn't the DSE use the same three-year methodology to calculate the water losses from seepage, evaporation and inefficient irrigation practices in the Murray Goulburn irrigation area? Easy. It would have exploded Government claims that there could be savings of 325 gigalitres under the $2.1 billion Food-bowl Modernisation Program, including the 75 gigalitres for Melbourne via the pipeline. The bigger the drought, the lower the rainfall and the lower the losses.
Based on the three drought years, the modernisation program would have to "save" 94% of these projected losses.
Even a network of pipes couldn't achieve this level of efficiency.
The DSE used a run of 10 years to get a higher level of "losses", which reduced the required recovery rate to 84%.
This was enough to convince federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to
approve the pipeline. But more independent observers disagree. Former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery described the reasoning as "bullshit".Kenneth Davidson is a senior columnist. Email: kdavidson@theage.com.au
Peter Ker , The Age our highlighting
September 12, 2008
CLIMATE change should be the catalyst for a radical social re-engineering of Victoria, according to a controversial submission to a State Parliament inquiry that has pitted the west of the state against the east.
The inquiry into Melbourne's future water needs has been told that cities in Western Victoria would become drier and government investment on jobs and infrastructure would be better spent in Gippsland.
In a twist, Bendigo Mayor David Jones said there was "a little bit of truth" in the controversial attack on his city.
Submitted by Wellington Shire Council — in eastern Victoria — the document suggested that Gippsland take over the "food-bowl responsibility" for Victoria in "all future government thinking".
"Proposals to move water from Gippsland to western areas of the state to support agricultural activity … must be reconsidered," said the submission, which was signed by Wellington chief executive Lyndon Webb.
"The encouragement of jobs and population growth to areas to the west of Melbourne, including Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo, which are targeted to experience significant reductions in rainfall through climate change, must be challenged on the basis that these regional areas are becoming more reliant on water from Gippsland."
The comments are a reference to the increasing interconnection of water supply across the state under the Victorian Water Grid, which the Government claims will allow water to flow from "Wonthaggi to Wycheproof".
Bendigo and Ballarat already drink water from Lake Eildon via the Goulburn River and "Goldfields super-pipe".
Cr Jones said Bendigo had a robust, diverse economy that continued to warrant investment, but he added that people had to be realistic about the impact of climate change.
"There is a little bit of truth in that submission … there is some merit in the idea that some of the high water-using industries should be located where the water is," he said.
But other figures from western Victoria responded angrily to the attack from Wellington Shire, with Labor MP for Western Victoria Jaala Pulford saying investment in her electorate should continue "with gusto".
"I can confidently say that residents of Geelong and Ballarat would be outraged at the suggestion that western Victoria be left to dry out," she said.
■The purchase of a large irrigation property in NSW will provide little relief to the ailing lower lakes of the Murray River, but federal Water Minister Penny Wong said there would still be important environmental benefits from this week's $23.75 million buyback of Toorale Station.
Wednesday's purchase of Toorale, by the Commonwealth and NSW governments, appeared to have revived speculation that other large properties may be auctioned.
Radioactive River?
Radio 3CR’s Radioactive Show has delved into how the Port of Melbourne Corporation (PoMC) avoided testing Yarra sediments for radionuclides, in spite of a long history of Uranium processing at the then CSIRO research laboratories at 506 Lorimer St Port Melbourne adjacent to the Yarra.
Did you know that from the 1940's to the 1960's uranium from Rum Jungle and Radium Hill was shipped to this site, and unloaded at the adjacent dock for reprocessing and experimentation? No? You are not alone. Time to find out....... Podcast now available: Go to: www.3cr.org.au, then chose Podcasts, then scroll down to The Radioactive Show.
The show will be available until Tuesday 9th September and will then be archived on the Friends of the Earth website.
And - Check 3CR Podcasts for future interviews on this issue, including with a former worker at the CSIRO site during the 1980’s.
Dredge plume spreads, seal dies
Peter Ker, The Age
September 6, 2008
A SEAL was killed and another accidentally captured after they were caught in underwater nets used to monitor the Port Phillip Bay dredging project, prompting authorities to overhaul the monitoring program.
The netting of seals was revealed in the Port of Melbourne's latest quarterly report into the channel-deepening project, which also revealed the dredge plume was spreading further around the bay than expected, and chemical concentrations had breached limits on multiple occasions.
In a move that environmentalists said was concerning, the Port of Melbourne has sought to weaken some environmental thresholds and has already altered some environmental monitoring programs.
The two seals were caught in trawl netting on July 12 as officials sought to monitor the impact of dredging on anchovy numbers in the bay. Anchovies are an indicator of bay health because they are hunted as food by larger species, particularly penguins.
Authorities confirmed yesterday the trawling method will be altered — with new seal protection measures — to prevent further seal injuries or deaths.
But anti-dredging campaigners were last night focusing on the behaviour of the dredge plume, which has continued to spread beyond official predictions. A special meeting of state and federal authorities was called after dredging in the north of the bay created a plume that was described in yesterday's report as "a significant deviation" from the Port of Melbourne's expectations.
In particular, the plume was floating east of the "designated material ground" off Mordialloc, where contaminated silt from the Yarra mouth has been dumped.
The report said the plume, from dredging of non-contaminated areas, spread to important areas including a spawning ground for snapper. Despite calling the meeting, the Port of Melbourne said the plume deviation had not been environmentally significant and a threshold level up to five times weaker could be more appropriate.
Australian Conservation Foundation spokesman Chris Smyth said he was worried that standards could be "watered down".
But the Port of Melbourne also appeared to be "refining" either the limits or data collection methods for ammonium and zinc levels in bay waters after both chemicals were recorded above target levels.
"They are changing the goalposts to make sure they are always within the environmental limits," Mr Smyth said.
Port spokesman Greg Russo said ammonium levels had been higher than normal in parts of the bay for five years, and data for chemical levels could be improved.
Despite turbidity increasing, none of the turbidity standards set by the Port of Melbourne were breached
Empty promises?
Royce Millar The Age Feature
September 4, 2008
Garnaut: take the lead on emissions
The State Government has placed its faith in large engineering projects to secure Melbourne's water future. But has good policy been trumped by politics?
SPRING 2006 was a turning point for water policy in Victoria. For years Labor had shunned big water engineering projects - dams, desalination and the like - preferring instead to focus on demand-side measures including water-saving ad campaigns, encouraging water-smart appliances, and incentives for rainwater tanks.
Through the early 2000s, scientists and economists were influencing an agenda long dominated by engineers. Or, as Latrobe University water expert Lin Crase puts it: "This was one of those rare times in water history when the enthusiasm of the engineer was tempered by the logic of the economist and the science of the ecologist."
After a punishing decade of drought, culminating with record low rainfalls for winter and spring, then premier Steve Bracks and his team confronted an unthinkable scenario: Melbourne running out of water.
The response, according to Government insiders and observers was something close to panic. The drought seemed to be worsening and with climate change, it was possibly permanent. Maybe water-saving campaigns, recycling and some rain harvesting on new estates would not be enough to ensure the city's water supplies?
In mid-2007 the Government, in a surprise new water plan, turned to big engineering-dominated answers; plants and pipes that would delivered water fast, albeit at big financial and environmental costs: the energy-intensive, $3.1 billion desalination plant at Wonthaggi and a $1 billion north-south pipeline to link Melbourne to the river network north of the Great Divide.
Both projects have been hotly contested by coastal and farming communities concerned with the impacts on the environment in Gippsland and rural economies to the north.
But what of the effects of these decisions for Melbourne's water future? It is a question that increasingly has experts worried. Some are wondering whether the Brumby Government's enthusiasm for big-ticket solutions is then sacrificing options that may well be more healthy for the state in the long term, including continued water conservation and rain and stormwater harvesting and recycling.
Recent events have fuelled their concerns.
After 12 years of drought and a combination of water-saving campaigns and restrictions, Melburnians cut their water use by 35% per head compared to the mid-1990s.
But this week Water Minister Tim Holding revealed that the citywide trend was upward again with more water used this winter than in 2007 - about 13 million litres more a day, a small increase but an increase none the less. The rise was attributed to population growth and fatigue with water-saving messages.
The news came the same week The Age revealed a behind-the-scenes row at the highest levels of Government over the future of rainwater tankpolicy. Dubbed the "water tank wars" by one senior Government figure, the water industry is watching the debate closely as an important indicator of the Government's policy direction.
Under the current 5-star energy rating scheme, all new homes have to install either a rainwater tank, solar hot water or third-pipe recycling. A concerted bid is under way high in the Government to relax this requirement, especially the role of tanks.
"With desalination plants and other water initiatives coming in, the rainwater tank has been singled out as something that may not be warranted in the future," one senior figure said .
The upward trend in water use and the anti-tank campaign have fuelled concern that Victoria is hitching itself to a water future more in keeping with 19th-century rather than 21st-century thinking; that is, a centralised system under which water is pumped from outside the city to consumers with little idea or interest in where it came from, or where it will end up.
The Government insists that it remains committed to a range of water solutions including tanks, raingardens and recycling as well as desal and pipelines. "We need a diverse range of solutions which is exactly what the Brumby Government is doing," Holding said last week.
This view is shared by Melbourne Water managing director Rob Skinner who insists that "multiple options" including tanks and recycling are necessary and supported.
Asked to paint a picture of the city's water sources in 2050, Skinner says: "Long term, we'll need to take the pressure off our drinking water supplies as they stand, through major water projects and initiatives like increased use of recycled water and conservation measures like rainwater tanks. We'll also need sources that are non-rainfall dependent, like the desalination plant to be completed by the end of 2011."
Skinner expects Melbourne to be "leading the world when it comes to water-sensitive urban design"; that is, a city planned and developed with in-built water-saving and harvesting methods including a rain garden or rainwater tank in most homes.
This view is largely supported in the Government's pre-desal document, Central Regional Sustainable Water Strategy, which covers Melbourne. It says the starting point should be conserving water, which has negligible environmental or social impacts.
To achieve this will take a concerted overall strategy - which does not currently exist - and years of concerted policy work and investment in often commonsense but little explored water harvesting and recycling projects.
There are no official figures about the number of tanks, raingardens and the like currently in operation in Melbourne. A confidential consultant's report to Government claims 237,000 tanks were sold between 2002 and 2007. A separate Government report from 2006 estimated that just 1 billion litres of water was harvested by such means per year in Melbourne, a tiny fraction of the 400 to 500 billion litres a year used.
Still, as much rain runs off Melbourne as is consumed and to harness it could drastically reduce the need for more mega-desal plants. So much so, says Monash University's Tim Fletcher, that half the city's water needs could be satisfied with a comprehensive water harvesting and recycling strategy.
But critics including the former director of the Water Studies Centre at Monash University, Professor Barry Hart, say it is now clear the Government is more interested in making Melbourne "water secure" than "water sensitive".
"Regrettably, since the mid 2000s governments have reverted to the frenzy of engineering fixes, panicked into action by a perception that there will be an intolerable political backlash should stage 4 water restrictions ever be invoked."
Crase says the Government is wedded to politically driven, "iconic engineering works" whose economic and environmental costs and benefits had not been properly assessed.
If it is true that projects such as desalination are diverting attention and resources from other alternatives, then this may well present real problems for the future. For while the Wonthaggi desal plant is to be the biggest in Australia it will not necessarily resolve Melbourne's water woes. This is especially given the estimates for the city's population growth and parching impacts of climate change.
The Government believes Melbourne's population may balloon to 6 million by 2050. Based on current levels of consumption, demand for water could rise as high as 650 to 700 billion litres a year.
Even with the desal plant and some recycled water, this growth in demand and declining rainfall and run-off into catchments are likely to leave a shortfall come mid-century or before.
And the response?
Critics are concerned that if the Government withdraws support and investment for alternatives, pipelines and desal plants will follow.
"The Government currently appears convinced that they have now solved Melbourne's domestic water situation and appear reluctant to consider any of the more long-term solutions," Hart says.
"This is a concern because if we don't start investigating and implementing some of the other more sustainable options (e.g. rainwater tanks properly plumbed into the house, storm water recycling, indirect potable water, etc) Melbourne in 20-30 years' time will inevitably be left with another crisis situation and another technological fix, perhaps another desal plant or two."
Others, including Melbourne University senior planning lecturer Anna Hurlimann doubts that more desal plants will be built because their inadequacy as a real water option will be revealed soon after the Wonthaggi plant commences operation.
"This will have happened in the period 2015-2020 after the political realisation that desalination is an unsustainable approach to water management. Desal will be primarily too expensive to run, based not only on initial costs, but also additional costs due to carbon taxes."
Hurlimann's predicts that by 2050 Melbourne will have moved to a more decentralised approach to water management and that the city will indeed have become a water catchment with tanks recycling, sewer mining and stormwater harvesting all part of daily lives built on massively reduced daily water consumption.
A popular theme among those wanting more focus on conserving and catching water is that the city itself should be transformed into a catchment. As well as boosting water supplies, goes the theory, the collection of rain and stormwater results in less polluted run-off into the city's embattled rivers and creeks.
Not all are convinced however that all will be quite so rosy. The Australian Conservation Foundation's sustainable cities campaigner, Kate Noble, says on current evidence Victoria's politicians are unlikely to make the long-term commitment necessary to avoid a string of additional desal plants.
"In 2050, we will be in the odd situation (much like today) where we put huge amounts of public funding into desalination plants so we can use drinking water to flush our toilets, water the lawn and cool our power stations, while we watch stormwater equivalent to our annual metropolitan water use flow straight down the drain.
"We will have more empty dams in 2050 than we have now, because at some point one of the governments of the day had the bright idea that another dam would save us from climate change."
Royce Millar The Age Feature our highlighting
September 2, 2008
VICTORIA'S job market, economy and embattled northern rivers are all suffering as a result of State Government-backed restrictions on water trading among farmers, a confidential Federal Government study has found.
A report for Water Minister Penny Wong's department, obtained by The Age, has found that the 4% cap on the buying and selling of water rights is costing cash-strapped farmers $19 million and the state economy almost $6 million, as well as 40 potential jobs.
It is also a "severe constraint" on the ability of the Federal Government and others to purchase water for the rivers and wetlands of the southern Murray-Darling basin.
Its findings are embarrassing for a State Government that prides itself on a free-market agenda but has championed a cause dismissed by many critics as old-fashioned agrarian socialism.
The report was seized on yesterday by environment groups that have been pushing to lift the cap to free up water for the environment, and what they describe as more "high value" agriculture.
Environment Victoria's chief executive, Kelly O'Shanassy, said it showed that the Government's opposition to lifting the water usage cap in the Murray-Darling Basin was costing jobs, restricting economic gain, and undermining the health of our major rivers. The August report by Hyder Consulting says the cap has prevented many farmers from selling their water entitlements and, in some cases, getting off the land altogether.
It says that in the 2007-08 irrigation season, the 4% cap was reached in seven out of the 10 districts in northern Victorian.
A total of almost 7.4 billion litres of water rights worth $19 million could not be sold.
The report says the estimates of the cap's economic downsides are probably understated as they do not account for farmers not even trying to sell, because the cap in their district has been reached.
Under water-trading rules, irrigating farmers are free to sell their legal right to extract water from rivers and streams. They can also trade their yearly allocation. But a cap applied through the southern Murray Darling region restricts such trade to just 4% of a district's overall entitlement. It is intended to avert an exodus of drought-stricken farmers and prop up struggling irrigation communities.
Victoria successfully opposed a federal bid to scrap the cap at the July Council of Australian Governments meeting.
Under a compromise, the cap will be lifted to 6% late next year.
The consultant's report calls instead for the cap to be phased out completely by 2014, with the first change, to 6%, in January.
Yesterday Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding defended the Government's position. "Despite pressure from the Commonwealth and other states, Victoria has been able to ensure the 4% cap remains," he said.