1 June 2008

ACT water cap

| smokey4
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A little bit more on the ACT 40 gigalitre water cap which sort of explains some of the numbers. from the ABC news-

“Concerns have been raised that Canberra has been shortchanged with its Murray-Darling Basin water allocation of 40 gigalitres.

The cap was agreed to at a meeting of the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council last week.

Water activist and microbiologist Peter Collignon says the deal is limiting.

He says currently with stage three restrictions the ACT uses about 50 gigalitres a year with 24 gigalitres being pumped back into waterways. That leaves a net consumption of 26 gigalites.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/27/2256549.htm for the complete article.

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He is a microbiologist who butted heads with the Govt. and Actew over recycled water.

From this point on he has become an “expert” and now thinks he is a water policy strategist

No doubt he is a smart man but there are lots of educated idiots in this town

i think he is a water ‘activist’ [and a microbiology expert].

he almost sounded reasonable, but something just didn’t gel… i hadn’t caused to hear of him before this. has he form?

I’m not sure why anyone listens to Collignon?

I didn’t realise he was a water expert?

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy12:08 pm 02 Jun 08

I guess what we have to work out is how much we realistically need, and how we get it. I think we would be wise to figure out a cunning plan to collect and keep more water than we currently do, given the population expansion going on in Australia, and Canberra.

I am still having trouble working out the numbers and the benefit of recycling more of the 24 giga litres going back into the system as that will come off the cap anyway along with water purchased from the Snowy. If the use was 56 gigalitres (Number ABC news originally used) with 24 giga litres returned then usage would be 32 giga litres. Add another 50,000 houses and not much of the cap would remain.
To much smoke and mirrors.

i heard collignon on 666 last week, then stanhope after him and the two’s ideas of numbers seemed wildly disparate. collingnon asserted that the act’s historic allocation was 200+gl, while stanhope noted that this was the total available in the whole system – one of them is being somewhat misleading, and if it is stanhope [esp to the degree collignon argues], one would imagine a lot of other water experts would be weighing in to the debate, no?

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