15 January 2007

State of the Murrumbidgee River

| roccon
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Has anyone seen the state of the Murrumbidgee River near the Cotter Pumping Station.

It looks like chocolate milk, not much water at all and almost stagnant looking. Yummo

Pumping from the river is one of ACTEW’s backup plans if we run the dams dry or become unusable.

Does Actew have a backup plan to the backup plan ?

I can’t see Snowy Hydro releasing water for us without paying a lot of money as they are holding back and reducing the normal flow of water to the Bidgee, Murray and Snowy River to keep their Electricity Contracts viable whilst the Snowy dams are so empty.

[ED – I reckon Snowy Hydro will cough up if the price is enough to unwind their energy futures, no-one said it would be cheap]

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went for a ride to Kambah Pool the other morning and the mud flow that is the ‘Bidgee was horrible to see, the rain in tuggeranong last night will only add to the erosion and mudflow.

Took the kids down to Pine Island on Saturday morning and the water there was chocolate brown as well. As far as I could see the river has stopped flowing at all. The kids had a loverly time climbing around the rocks that used to be submerged under 2 feet of water a few years ago…

Water at Tumut pond above Tumut 1 power station is 28m from the top. I reckon that equates to about 15% storage capacity, surely not enough to run the generatos.

irrigators up stream from this point have been flushing pumps, getting ready for anticipated bushfires. this could be the reason for it. not too mention run off from NYE. water being taken by ACTEW would probably happen upstream of ACT, so i wouldn’t worry about chocolate water at this stage.

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