A GIGALITRE (GL) is a lot of water! It’s one billion litres or a hectare of water 100 metres high. One gigalitre is capable of producing 1000 tonnes of rice or 1000 bales of cotton.
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It’s absurd that so much time and money is being spent on trying to find savings if an extra 450GL is just going to be used elsewhere, with no accountability, by numerous different bureaucratic departments.
- Helen Dalton and Debbie Buller
Today we focus on some federal water policy known as the 450GL up water.
In the dying days of the Gillard government and just before the basin plan was signed by State Governments, the 450GL of up water was quite sneakily shoe horned into the basin plan.
It can take many years to undo poor policy but, if it suits the government of the day, it seems it only takes a heartbeat to enact it.
That 450GL up water is in addition to the 2750GL that was the number the MDBA required to be taken out of production. It’s proving problematic to deliver the 2750GL to the lower lakes and other wetlands. There is growing evidence that it’s resulting in damage to the upstream environment and to private and public property.
To deliver an additional 450GL of up water is therefore impractical. The attached legislation called ‘Constraints Management Strategy’ is supposed to control the negative impacts of creating artificial overbank floods. They think raising a few roads and building a few bridges will fix it.
It’s ironic that for decades, departments have been unable to work together to build a much-needed new bridge between Echuca and Moama. Apparently private property like people’s houses, sheds and farms or other public infrastructure like camping grounds, public parks and golf courses don’t count?
It’s absurd that so much time and money is being spent on trying to find savings if an extra 450GL is just going to be used elsewhere, with no accountability, by numerous different bureaucratic departments.
While regional communities work hard for water efficiencies and the price of temporary and permanent water is sky-rocketing, it is unacceptable that government departments can just splash about water and money and then mark their own homework. That 450GL represents the productive equivalent of 450,000 tonnes of rice or 450,000 bales of cotton.
What are they actually going to do with it?
Considering that extra 450GL was thrown in at the very last second, it is time to throw it out. It was a political manoeuvre that is not realistically deliverable. We need our state and federal representatives to demand action and undo poor policy.
