Brisbane water dries up...

Yes & on the Gold Coast we can't use a hose & have to use a bucket. All because of a D-ck Head called Campbell Newman in Brisbane who winges at the drop of hat ! This is the year 2006 & were using buckets with a full dam, so much for Bureaucrats.

Shane, an incredibly ignorant reply if ever I heard one.
Do you have [B]ANY[/B] comprehension of how serious our Se Qld water probelm is?
If a city the size of Brisbane runs out of water, it would make what happened to New Orleans look pretty minor!
The [B]whole city[/B] would have to be evacuated. Sewage doesn't work, nothing works.
Suggest you pull your head in! I'm afraid the "D-head" is your mayor. The gold coast dam's water may be needed just to keep essential services functioning in Brisbane.
This is a deadly serious problem, make no mistake!

Lads,

There is so much underlying politics to this issue than most people will ever know. For as long as I can remember, BCC has been pumping Brissy's water into the Hinze dam and using it kinda like a bank account so that when it does become dire up here, we can make a withdrawal and reverse the pumps. Problem that has cropped up lately is that now the Hinze is full, BCC won't shut off the pumps so water is (read: was) going over the spillway and being wasted. BCC's logic being that the more we pump through, the more we can ask for back. I believe the GCCC has finally won an appeal of sorts and had the pumps shut down.

Trev: I have no idea what's goin on that's causing the rain to fall everywhere but in our catchment areas.

Shane: It's a SE QLD issue and needs a more regional approach - I understnad your beef but.

FLash: I appreciate your concern - but a lot of people are ignorant of the real issue not by choice - but by decades of little to no education of the topic. We should've been doing something about this a LONG time ago! The only reason Brisbane residents are now educated is because they have no choice now.

Cheers
Scoey!

Not Happy Jan,

Here on the Gold Coast the dam is at 94.21% full today, yet we are on the same severe water restictions we were on 2 yrs ago when our dam was at about 27%.

The pollies tell us the Hinze dam isn't even big enough for the gold coast with a population under 500,000, how on earth is it going to provide water for all of S.E.Qld. 2,500,000+. And then there is the issue of there being no pipe to take water from the Hinze dam to Brisbane even if we wanted to.

It annoys me 'cause on the Gold Coast we were among the 1st major cities in Oz to get into severe water restrictions a few years ago while Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne etc were laughing it up. Brissy was helping out with a small amount of water per day, which they no longer are of course. Then we get the rain over the last 2 yrs to fill our dam and get off severe restrictions. But now we are back on severe water restrictions 'cause Brissy has no water. It makes no sense because we don't have the facility to give them our water even if we wanted to. And if we could give it to them it wouldn't last 5 minutes (well by my rough reckoning, it'd take 6mths to drain the dam from full to empty) 'cause the dam is too damn small to service 5 times our current population. If someone could explain the logic to me, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Aaron.

Fusion.
Suggest you do a university degree on the subject, or leave it to experts.(NOT politicians!!)
When the Gold coast was in trouble years ago, it was phisically impossible for Brisbane pipe much water down there.... ie: there was simply no way to send the water down there, so you had tough restrictions.
Now the whole region is in very serious trouble, you don't send it down the drain on the coast while Brisbane is about to run out. That would be beyond dumb!
When I say it could be worse than what happened to New Orleans I'm dead serious.
If a city the size of Brisbane ran out, it would be a major catastrophy.

....With people like you saying that, it just shows what a lousy job the politicians are doing in managing this whole mess, and getting the message across.

G'day Flash,

I still don't see how us (Gold Coasters) not using water is going to help Brisbane. There is no way to get our water to brisbane, and even if there was, we don't have enough water to do much good.

While I don't disagree that running out of water would be a major catastrophy, I'm having a hard time figuring what we can do about it on the GC. eg. How does not allowing me to clean under my car once every couple of months with a hose help Brisbanes water shortage?

The politicians are doing a lousy job with the marketing, I just get annoyed when they keep saying we've had no rain, our dams are dry that's why you're on restrictions, when it isn't true for the Gold Coast. We've had heaps of rain over 2 yrs and our dam is full.

And BTW if anyone can tell me how to clean mud off the underside of a 4wd with a bucket I'm all ears.

Thanks,

Aaron.

How about "Car- Lovers" or similar.
They use mostly fltered recycled water and you can use a Karcher type wand I think.
I haven't used them, but my son did after a damp weekend up at Landcruiser park a few weeks ago and his Patrol came back shiny after starting out absolutely filthy!
Cheers

I've been thinking about using a high pressure water thingy. They claim to only use about 5 litres per minute, which is about 1/2 the water we use just taking a shower.

It is also possible to put the water feeder tube into a bucket and therefore be completely within the water restrictions to not use a hose. Although I did have the devious idea of putting the bucket under the tap, and therefore be able to use the pressure cleaner without filling up a bucket every 2 mins. It's stoopid, but legal I think...

Thanks,

Aaron.

How much water is in Boondooma Now???

I have a photo hereabouts when it was 5% and it still had 30 metres in the main basin and you could still fish up around the junction.

Brian

Brian,

I haven't been there for zonks so I couldn't tell you what it looks like lately. Last time I was there it was down to 10% (about) and I thought it was pretty ordinary then, maybe my expectations are too high???
If I remember right the boat ramp at the campground was mud at the waters edge and loading and unloading was being done (for the bigger boats) down at the main ramp. All smaller craft were being hand loaded into and out of the water.
Is still worth going back but I will wait for more water.

Cheers, Trevor.

Must have been well over a year since you were there, as it is at 25% (the lowest it has been for at least a year, based on their data).

For dam levels for Sunwater controlled waterbodies, check out www.sunwater.com.au/water_store.htm

Andrew

Andrew it was many years ago maybe 8 - 10 years and that is the lowest i have ever seen it.

Not long after I was there at the level it rain and put some 20 odd feet in the dam and filled I believe the same year or early the next year.

Brian

scarey when you see dams at those levels! It's sometimes hard to remember what extremely low levels looks like (i remember the good old days of Atkinson Dam, Moogerah Dam, Bill Gunn Dam etc when they were always full) as we generally talk about Burdekin Dam up here (NQ) which never seems to drop below 80% (and it is much 50% larger than Wivenhow Dam!) and is almost always full each year!

Andrew

Hi Brian,

Don't need a boat. You can drive across the dam.

Brian, you are right; governments in general are reactive, not proactive. They wait until it's virtually too late before they fix things. Water supply is such a huge issue yet, as you stated, there is no forethought and now we have situations all over the country where we are running out of water, nothing is being done about the supply, yet there is no brakes on new residential estates which are putting more demand on the non-existent supply of water; derr!

Yeh,
It was the Goss (Labour) government that stopped building dams, and continued the Labor tradition of NOT building infrastructure. Sadly, Beatty continued that tradition.
Just look at our health system in Qld. Now Beatty is having a panic, throwing money at the problems.... but it's too little, too late.

Bware,

I agree, there seems to be very little analysis happening. It wasn't so long ago that they disclosed that our power industry was using 70 million litres drinking water a day - what a shocker, mainly due to purpose built dams being inappropriatly located to power station. To put that into context, the current restrictions were designed to save 40/50 million litres per day.

I hope they are working out where water is being used - like all us residential users - to assess its need.

Kind regards

Hi Brian B

Well said!!! The" Goverment of the day" was happy to have the population boom but forgot to allow for the inevitable. Being an ex Brissy I do feel for them though. It's hard to imagine though that the rain is not falling in the catchment areas, a real waste!

Cya
:)

G'day Reiner,

They want you to think that they have a plan and are happy to show it in the press etc, including new dams, pipes, desalination plants, bore water, using recycled sewerage for the power stations and finally restrictions. Unfortunately, the restrictions are the only thing that seems to be happening with any effect. The other stuff takes years and they are bickering about that so no one seems to be actually doing anything in a hurry - which is what is required.

Planning is one thing but the situation calls for urgent action NOW.

Kind regards

That's all weel and good when the plant has plenty of money and is new. After twenty years things start breaking down, the government decides to privitise it and the new company has "an obligation to the shareholders".
Next thing you realise is that it's not hot chocolate that you're drinking.
:)

R

G'day Scoey,

Mate, I have a mental problem drinking $hit, already have to eat $hit at work. I hope they have a plan that involves them finding alternative uses for this cr@p - like cooling power stations AND save the good water for drinking. I hope there are a truck load of alternatives being exercised before we get to that. Might have to buy a place in the Kimberley (Kunnunarra or Broome) they won't ever have to do that up there with the Ord.

Kind regards

hehe! Or hearty beef chunky soup! ;-) Let's just say the gear I drank came straight from a treatment plant and it was fairly old. Govt run, but still old. The same can be said for any water infrastructure but, if they didn't maintain the water infrastructure to the (limited) level that they do - the water could be potentially toxic! Effluent or not!

Cheers
Scoey!

G'Day Beatit,

You'd be surprised where recycled water is already (and has been for years) being pumped into potable water sources to be treated agian and used for drinking. I couldn't tell the difference between the so called "tap" water and the recycled gear - I doubt many other people would either! It's just a mind over matter and marketing issue.

If I can make an analogy - when I was a little lad I wouldn't eat my veges cause i thought they were bleep . Now that I'm all grown up and a big boy I love them. They're still the same veges, but my attitude and level of education has changed!

Lastly mate, there's not much "good water" left to save for drinking - that's the problem! :-(

Cheers mate!

Scoey!

Scoey,

I never thought I'd be saying this but the bride convinced me to buy one of those filter urns a couple of years ago, holds about 10 litres. What a smart move it seems, I'll let her know that she was right again - damn that was difficult to type. Watching a program a couple of weeks ago where a councilor at Ipswich drank some of this stuff to show it was OK, he was a marketing nightmare, reckon he was about 10 nano seconds from gagging.

I know your right about the water, all the more reason to make sure it is only being used for drinking - not cooling power generators.

Kind regards

Beatit,

I agree wholeheartedly with you that we shouldn't be using potable water for anything other than drinking as well - don't get me wrong. I must have missed the show with the Ipswich Councillor drinking the recycled gear, haha, they obviously didn't rehearse that one! Idiots! All I can say is that when I drank it, it tasted just like tap water. Oh well, if we get some good rain over the dam catchments that fills them up - we can go back to forgetting about the water crisis till next time we're down to less than 30%!

My great uncle used to always say to me, "The next drought starts the day the rain stops." I reckon he might just be onto something! Too bad the pollies won't listen to and old Sheep farmer from Central QLD!

Cheers
Scoey!

Hey you guys joined too! Cool! Good onya's! ;-)

Cheers,
Ross!

Yes Ross we are officially a part of the posse!
Couldn't get my rig pic to work though, will sit down later and fiddle with it and add more photos.

Cheers
Jo

Yep, I'd better pull my finger out eh! Good luck with the rig pic! ;-)

Cheers
Ross!

Wrong.... You really don't know what you are talking about.
It was primarily water supply, AND flood mitigation, AND power as well. (Supplies power at peak times.)
And trust me, without the Wivenhoe, Brisbane would have run out of water years and years ago! It has caught plenty of rain water over the years, just not enough recently.
Joe and the Nationals built infrastructure. (Dams, Hospitals, power stations etc etc etc)
Labour NEVER has and that is exactly why we are in such a pickle.

Flash - you are really easy to bait - I wish I could catch fish as easily as getting you going

Don't let your politics get in the way of a good forum like this

Ah well, maybe so. Happy fishing.
However when somebody makes a statement that's quite simply wrong, I feel the need to reply with some facts.
The sad thing is that political parties (note: no name mentioned!!!) have had wins both in state and federal politics at least partly attributable to cancelling the development of dams- which we need in this dry old country of ours.
.......It's either that or limit the population somehow.........
Obviously we also need recycling and various other schemes urgently, but equally sadly, that is not a vote winner.
Cheers

Next to impossible to achieve. As a rule of thumb, 1m diametre pipe for this purpose costs $1000/m ......best case scenario, 2750km, dead straight. So there goes 2.7 Billion dollars. That is without taking in account pump stations ($2m+ per pump station per 100km, best case), balance tanks, surge protection for water hammer, telemetry, huge valves, redundancy protection, electricity supply to each pump station, etc etc.

The other issue with these types of schemes is that in the process they go through numerous shire who would want to tap into the scheme. It ends up being a nightmare :-) Don't even think about the native title issues :-)

A 1m pipe, ignoring offtakes, would be able to supply 135 Ml per day, which is enough to supply a city the size of Townsville (150,000) let alone Brisbane's 2 million + !!!

The numbers we are talking about would put the Snowy Hydro to shame ;-) It would be cheaper to do a desal plant, even with extremely strict environmental stipulations.... Even better would be to move up North!! ;-)

Andrew

Andrew I can see your point - yes expensive.
The proposed tunnel under the Brisbane River for traffic? what cost?
The cost of our new defense fighter Jets - over $12bn.
(see Aust Parliment review - 9th June 2006.)
Cost of the new helicopters for Navy and Army $5bn.
Cost of Collions Class Submarines - $5bn +.

Is the need for water (survival) such a low priority against a $20bn+ purchase of new military hardware?

A 10% drop in that expenditure, would go a long way. That still leaves 90% for expensive guns.
Just a thought. Money is not an issue when Governments see the need.
....................regards.

yeh, i know where you are coming from :-)

The difference is that your spending issues are for Federally available infrastructure as opposed to a bleep load of money for one City (albeit large city).

A hundred years ago, if a town ran out of water, they would shut shop and move elsewhere.......oh, how times have changed ;-)

Andrew

Australia spends between 2 and 3% of GDP on defence . This is a woefully small ammount and it supports a woefully inadequate defence force . Your idea of a 10% cut in the defence vote has already been done , often , that is how we got into our present state . The continued existance of national integrity is the first priority of any government and there is a bill to pay . We dont pay it , which is why the defence of Australia is based on a policy of sucking up to the USA .