Dams go down - price goes up

I-filed, it depends on the timeframe they were looking at, as well as the site. Obviously a dam site will need sufficient catchment and inflows to be viable.

Water pricing is the most sensible and fairest way to allocate water. A reasonable price up to a normal household’s average consumption, then incresingly draconian prices for large volume users. That way the user can determine if they are happy to spend $2-3 to hose down a driveway, or $2 per shower for long twice daily sojourns under the steaming water etc.

Personally I would like to see a price set for groundwater so that those who had bores also had to pay a certain amount for their use of the community’s resources.

People who live in the country know it is possible to live adequately on as little as 30-40% of what we in the city consider to be a fair amount so pricing water sensibly to limit the attractiveness of wasting it makes more sense than constantly trying to shore up the inadequacies in our current policies.

VYBerlina, I think they investigated a huge new dam and decided it would never be able to fill, didn’t they?
What happened to the Shoalhaven dam by the way – same story? No prospect of it ever filling?

None on eBay. I’ll try Amazon.

Don’t you need a cow to swap for magic beans?

Already have.

Guys…

Instead of just postulating your ideas and conspiracy theories here why not do something positive and constructive by submitting something to the ICRC to consider in their determinations:

http://www.icrc.act.gov.au/icrcreportsandpapers

In particular refer to : Report 9 of 2007 – Water and Wastewater Price Review

Community involvement:

The Commission is seeking comments from interested parties on the matters raised in this discussion paper and any other issues raised in this series of discussion papers.

To enable the Commission sufficient time to consider the submissions before releasing the draft decision in November 2007, the deadline for submissions is Friday, 19 October 2007.

Submissions, correspondence or other enquiries may be directed to the Commission at the following addresses:

The Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission
GPO Box 296 CANBERRA CITY ACT 2601
Level 2 12 Moore Street CANBERRA CITY ACT

The secretariat may be contacted at the above addresses, by telephone on 6205 0799, or by fax on 6207 5887.

The Commission’s website is at http://www.icrc.act.gov.au and its email address is icrc@act.gov.au.

For further information on this investigation or any other matters of concern to the Commission please contact the Commission on 6205 0779.

Just to make it clear, I’m not complaining about a rise in the cost of water. It’s only $90 a year after all. But it’s not the first price rise since the drought started, yet they keep pointing to increased costs and capital works. Yet we are yet to see more than baby steps on securing the future of this city’s water.

I was gobsmacked to hear Iemma invoking the climate change devil, as an excuse to impose permanent water restrictions on Sydneysiders, rather than to admit his government’s staggering incompetance in managing Sydney’s water and actually planning for a revamp of water pricing, new dams, desalination etc etc.

Cue for a similar stunt from the ACT Government at some point in the near future.

The problem with succession planning on water is that the glory for such forward thinking will lay at the feet of some future government, who also doesn’t have to bear the cost. So it is politically much easier for them to do nothing, and blame convenient scapegoats like climate change – where we are the point where anybody who claims otherwise gets to be tarred and feathered as a blasphemer, and a crank.

We city folk need to be pretty sensitive in our comments about water – considering that farmers are about to lose permanent plantings of citrus, almonds etc and a world food shortage is a real possibility according to some commentators (feel free to set me right on that!). If slugging us for water costs will help water infrastructure – administered intelligently – then I’m happy to pay up and install a Phoenix Arizona type garden.