Stage 4 on hold as ACTEW opens the flood gates

Indeed.

GregW what utter crap. The only reason we have the problem we do now is because legislators make rules that are, in a natural sense, completely arbitrary.

If we are really as desperate for water as Actew and our fearless leaders claim, and we are genuinely looking down the barrel of recycling sewage, then change the dam (no pun intended) rules!

The rules are supposed to help us all by balancing need. Try to stand on them to claim the high moral ground is ridiculous.

I thought that might be the case.

I’ve also been told GregW that this issue can be eliminated entirely if the ACT Government coughed up the money and purchased a few Murrumbidgee irrigation licenses.

Ralph. I suspect that you couldn’t cost recover by selling the silt – the cost of transporting the dirt from the point of extraction to the point of sale would be more than you could get for it.

Interesting how you people seem to be intentionally ignoring Ingeegoodbee comments that the water will be caught downstream, and that it is an obligation actew has no say in. Besides these water price increases don’t match the complete lost income actew incurs due to water restrictions so do you think if there was a choice actew would not flush the silt?

V8 saying that you wont conserve water because they are releasing some is akin to saying you refuse to drive safely because side curtain airbags aren’t mandatory.

I live somewhere it rains, in fact it rains all the bloody time. If it keeps on raining, I’m likely to get a call and a few days off work today even.

The problem is, contradictory to the fact that it keeps raining all the time, is I keep on getting told that it’s not raining, and that I’m imagining it falling out of the sky and making me all wet.

Somehow I’ve got a logic problem here that is resisting being solved.

The people who dredge Shab, pay the ACT Government for the exclusive right to do so. The dredgers then get a return by selling the silt on.

People living in the Hunter should just get over it – if you’re going to live somewhere it rains then get used to the furniture bobbing around the loungeroom – suck it up people, life’s just like that.

> Tell that to the people of the Hunter Valley …..

I did say “most”.

“Most of our rivers never flood “naturally” anymore.”

Tell that to the people of the Hunter Valley …..

Don’t know if they have a choice VY – I suspect that the releases are a mandated condition rather than a feel-good option.

The health of our rivers is a critical part of our water management V8.

If they seriously open the tap and let 2 gigalitres flow downstream for convenience sake, I will never bother trying to conserve water again. In the 80’s we weren’t allowed water tanks so we had to buy the govt’s, now they want us to skimp while they flush the river!

Screw them.

Sandbars built up in dry times and washed away during floods – I guess that’s why, when the flow of the river is regulated by a dam, it’s necessary to introduce flushing flows that mimmick the floods that would normally flush away silt.

> Our rivers coped for thousands of years without someone managing the silt for them. Sandbars built up in dry times and washed away during floods.

Errr..there were no dams then, or even hundreds of thousands of people using the water. Most of our rivers never flood “naturally” anymore.

Our rivers coped for thousands of years without someone managing the silt for them. Sandbars built up in dry times and washed away during floods.

Not a bad idea Ralph – but where is the money for dredging going to come from? Higher water prices? Special levies?

BTW – Isn’t Iraq supposed to be a capitalist utopia, what with it’s shiny new constitution (okay – I’m being facetious now. You don’t need to start ranting about the requirement of rule of law for free markets to work). I’m in no hurry to take off and live in Hugo’s little tinpot fiefdom, but I don’t accept that taking all the restraints off the invisible hand is necessarily going to result in a better world.

Ahem. Back on topic. Umm – now, I’m no expert…but surely reducing the amount of environmental flow will concurently reduce the amount of silt flowing down the rivers. Besides which, won’t slow-moving water carry less particulates?

Like I said – I’m no expert. Anyone got an explanation?

Why do they think they need to flush this river silt anyway?? As far as I’m away it is good for gardens and building materials. Put out a tender and get some company to dredge it out.

Yes Shab, North Korea, Cuba, Venezeula……….all fine places.

I love how we’re all experts in how to solve the water crisis. It’s always “All we need to do is x” or “If we only did y, everything would be fine”. I don’t believe for a second that it’s that easy an issue to solve, although obviously I’m not as informed as you of you. 😉

That’s pretty poor PR by actew. “Routine maintinence” is way too nebulous a statement for people not to get incredibly suspicious about.

And yes Ralph. Socialists are solely responsible for all that is wrong with the world. They also eat babies.

2 gigalitres is a drop in the ocean that has been let out of the dams in the last 5 years. The average annual discharge (excluding water required for our water supply) has been 25 gigalitres but the required environmental flow is only 8 gigalitres. And they don’t count the outflow from the Lower Molonglo treatment plant which provides 35 gigalitres a year of treated effluent that is higher quality than the water flowing into the ACT.

Our water supply problem would not exist at all if a simple change was made to the ACT legislation to allow the Lower Molonglo outflows to be counted as environmental flows and the idiots at ACTEW stopped dumping additional water from our dams.

If it’s the same release I was reading about the other day, it’s from either Bendora or Corin, and will be subsequently re-caught by one of the dams a bit further downstream. But of course where politics is involved you don’t let little details like “we’re not throwing away the water – it’ll still be in our dams” get in the way of bashing the other party.

Never mind all the rain that’s been washed down the river recently…..

I heard somewhere that the ‘routine maintenance’ they speak of is actually what’s called a ‘flushing flow’ mandated under the licensing arrangements for the storage – it involves rapidly dumping a hit of water downstream to combat fine sediment/silt build-up in the river.

It is because they are a bunch of socialists. Expect it on a national level with Krudd.

The dam levels have started going up over the past few days.

So they want to let this water out so that they can do maintenance? What if it keeps going up?Then let all of that water out too?

What a bunch of arse clowns.