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CRAIG COMMENTS |
Dam dilemma
Wednesday 13 September 2006
The push by the National Party for a dam on the Mitchell River is misguided and ill-informed. As was reported in last week’s East Gippsland News there is no major drive among farmers on the Lindenow Flats for such a scheme. What farmers are seeking is security during periods of low flows. This can potentially be achieved with alternative options of high flow pumping and storing the water in real off-river storages -- either individually built or jointly owned and operated -- buying storage space in the yet to be constructed East Gippsland Water’s Glenaladale storage, or in the Boisdale or other local aquifers.
The major impediment to any option, in particular the Nationals’ big dam plan, is changes initiated by a Liberal government in 1980 to the way dams for irrigation would be funded in the future.
The Liberal-sponsored Public Bodies Revue Committee recommended the abolition of the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, which was the body that had constructed all irrigation dams built from the first decade of the 20th century.
Even if the Nationals were able to persuade a future Liberal government to allow such a dam to be built (which is unlikely), the irrigators would have to find the necessary capital up-front. Governments rarely assist with finance in any way other than what’s demonstrated as the public benefit. Under these conditions, the cost of building a dam and financing the organisation needed to manage it would bankrupt every landowner on the Lindenow Flats.
In the 1970s and 80s, both Commonwealth and State governments were actively financing water conservation for irrigation. Storages and distribution works were financed by taxpayers, just as public transport and freeways are for city residents. The major parties agree that, as rivers belong to the Crown, they have the right to sell the water to the highest bidder.
That means the landowners on the Lindenow Flats would first have to outbid all other contenders, such as Melbourne Water, to buy the water in the first place. While that is bad enough, an even greater problem is that the money raised by the sale of water from the Mitchell River would be spent in Melbourne, rather than back here in East Gippsland.
Another factor is that all other storages are virtually entirely gravitation schemes. That means that the storages fill without any pumping being necessary and the water is distributed by gravity through channels or pipelines. These costs make the economics of building a storage on the Mitchell way out of question under current policies of the major parties.
If the Nationals have some plan for changing the views of the major parties, they should explain them and/or stop misleading good, hard working farmers who are trying to deal with difficult seasonal conditions.
If the plan is to share the water with the metropolitan area, the Nationals should learn the lesson of the Thomson Dam, which was built on this concept. Years of negotiation decided on a proportion that should come to Gippsland, but this was abandoned without any inquiry, any compensation or any consideration for the right of Gippslanders to benefit from the natural resources of the region.
