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No More Dams?

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2020hindsight said:
Smurf - I'm sure you've heard of TRAVESTON being referred to as "the saucer"?
Mainly because it would have been knee-deep for a grasshopper.
I'd be amazed if hydro was ever seriously considered there (and now it has been abandoned it seems).
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I don't have a lot of info on that particular dam, I'm commenting in terms of dams in general. But based on the info that I do have, it will require about 750 GWh of electricity to produce an equivalent volume of water via desal.

In terms of renewable energy, that power is more than the entire output of the two significant non-pumped storage (which don't generate net energy) hydro schemes Qld has. Or you could say it's 15% of the output of the entire Snowy hydro scheme. Or in terms of CO2 emissions it's equivalent to burning 326 million litres of petrol a year.

So it's not massive but it's certainly significant in terms of CO2 emissions from the desal alternative. That dam was, to my knowledge, effectively the single largest energy saving project ever proposed in Australia.

All that said, if the claims about are a flooded (29 km²) and depth (1.5 m) are correct then it's not what I'd call an ideal dam site. That doesn't mean it wouldn't have provided 150 GL of water per annum, but as a dam I'd have to say that it doesn't seem an overly good one.

Are there not other sites that could be developed either on that river or on somewhere else?

Or if the claims about leakage are correct (possible although I'm somewhat doubtful) then how about simply pumping water from the river instead of damming it? Once you take evaporation and any leakage into account from a dam you could still extract significant volumes purely by pumping assuming the river does have flow most of the time. Technically that's very easy and, as long as we're not talking about taking all the water out, need not have an overly great environmental impact.
 

Absolutely correct.....the creeks on Fraser Island have been flowing into the ocean for thousands of years.
Anyone whose visited the island will be aware of the huge volume of fresh water they discharge into the ocean every day.
A small portion of the water diverted into a pipeline wouldn't pose any threat to the creek.

I commend Wys for his commitment to environmental protection, but his thinking shows the lack of balance common to greenies.

I don't like to see environments destroyed either, but I'm all in favour of utilising natural resources if it can be done with minimal impact on the environment.
 
I have given some thought to the question recently raised by Mrs Hindsight (via 2020) about why we don't collect and distribute storm water run-off. I have come up with a solution which I am sure even Peter Garrett would approve.

It is so simple. You pick the lowest lying suburb in the city, dam any escape routes, and divert all the storm water into this bowl. Of course you would need a separate reticulation system for this sub-prime water. Kev's infrastructure stimulus will provide the money.

The beauty of it is that it will not affect any endangered species. We wouldn't even call it a dam...just wetlands. Endangered species would flock there.

The locals will not like it, but they are not an endangered species. They are probably lower socio-economic anyway. Rich, influential people live on high ground. And they are the drivers in NIMBY protests.
 

An excellent plan, Calliope....good to see a man with vision!

We could solve the crime problem in 'The Valley' in Brisbane, and store some water at the same time....kill two birds with the one stone.

And anyone who's in the habit of heading down to 'The Valley' for a drink after work could still do so - in fact they could drink all they wanted and it wouldn't cost them a cent!
 
I can see you are on the ball bunyip, All The Valley bottom feeders could become boat people and sail up the river to the leafy suburbs where their re-settlement would, no doubt, give the locals a warm inner glow.
 
Harnessing water from a new source such as Fraser Island or elswhere where there is an abundance is good in prinicpal but in practice the demand would also have to be much more tightly managed than it has been to date. This is where we have failed with the Murray/Darling basin.
 
Calliope and Bunyip: clearly you are both individuals with wisdom and initiative.

I propose to send a letter to Anna, cc to Mr Garrett, suggesting you be employed to advise both governments on water management.

Would you care to nominate an acceptable salary level, or perhaps you'd prefer to keep the provision of your expertise to payment on a 'per consultation' basis?

Bear in mind that there will be a small commission deducted for my personal services as your agent.
 

Well Julia - I'm sure Calliope has his own ideas, but I'd suggest that a couple of top consultants like him and myself could reasonably expect to command salaries in the order of half a million dollars a year. I'm more than happy to give you 10% in agents fees if you can get us on the government payroll.
 

More practical would be connecting all storm water drains that run into the river and pumping the water to a treatment plant. This would also solve the problem of plastics entering the aquatic system.
 
Wysiwyg said:
More practical would be connecting all storm water drains that run into the river and pumping the water to a treatment plant. This would also solve the problem of plastics entering the aquatic system.
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That sounds sensible.
 

Yes of course....the Murray/Darling has been a disaster in environmental mismanagement - any new project on Fraser Island or anywhere else would need to be planned with reference to the lessons learned from past mistakes.

I grew up on a rural property that straddled the Condamine River in Queensland, which is one of the rivers comprising the Murray/Darling system.
During my childhood my Dad irrigated 60 acres of lucerne from the Condamine. By the time I was a teenager, our small irrigation project was impossible due to hundreds of large scale cotton growers further upstream having been granted water harvesting licenses from the river.
Every time there was a half way decent flow in the Condamine, the cotton boys would turn on their massive flood-lifter pumps to fill their storage dams.
Entire ecosystems further downstream were destroyed because they no longer got regular water.
One such ecosystem was the 30 acre natural billabong on our property. During my childhood it was filled by floodwaters from the Condamine once a year or so on average. It was home to thousands of ducks and hundreds of pelicans, swans, and an assortment of other waterfowl.
By the time I reached my teenage years this billabong was almost permanently dry.
 
bunyip said:
I grew up on a rural property that straddled the Condamine River in Queensland, which is one of the rivers comprising the Murray/Darling system.
During my childhood my Dad irrigated 60 acres of lucerne from the Condamine.
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I too was raised on the Condamine but much further up towards it's source. Anybody today who owned 60 acres of irrigated lucerne on the river flat would be a rich man indeed.

The smell of lucerne hay is something you never forget. I remember using the pitchfork when I was a small boy, and occasionally forking up a black snake with the hay.
 

Ah....so you must have been from the Killarney, Warwick, Allora region?

Our place was down towards Chinchilla.

Snakes.....yes indeed - I had many a close call with the red-bellied black snakes that were prolific in the lucerne and around the swamps and billabongs.
Good thing they weren't particularly aggressive or I would have been taken out a dozen times over.
Had more than one snake-bitten dog over the years.
 

Killarney. There were willow trees all down the river, but now they have all been eradicated. They were obstructing the flow. As kids we used to have wonderful times swimming in the shaded pools under the willows. There was always plenty of work to be done but we managed to fit in a lot of fun and our parents never worried about what we were up to..and we all survived. Those were the days.

What we need now is regular cyclonic weather to get all the rivers in flood again and restore the Darling river system to it's former glory. And ban cotton growing. It is so polluting. Did you know that in the state of Mississippi they pay cotton farmers not to grow cotton?
 

Yeh, growing up in the bush and swimming in creeks and rivers and billabongs, and hunting and fishing and all the other things that country kids get up to.....those were the days.
All you born and bred city slickers, eat your hearts out at the idyllic childhoods that Calliope and I had!

Fortunately sanity prevailed when the damn cotton growers wanted to open up the channel country in Western QLD to cotton growing. It would have been a crying shame to see the water from the Cooper used for growing cotton instead of being allowed to feed the natural channels that make the channel country some of the best cattle country in Australia.
Slowly but surely we're learning not to interfere too much with our environment. But I still think we need to employ some balanced thinking and develop minimal environmental impact projects such as utilising some of the fresh water on Fraser Island.

No, I wasn't aware that in Mississippi they pay the farmers not to grow cotton. Can't see it happening here.
 
Wysiwyg said:
More practical would be connecting all storm water drains that run into the river and pumping the water to a treatment plant. This would also solve the problem of plastics entering the aquatic system.
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The principle is similar to what smart farmers have been doing to recycle runoff.

Better still, have a mini hydro pumping scheme powered by flood waters in selected fast flowing water courses to connect to the storm water run-off and send some of it back to the existing dams.

If it was designed into an integrated pipe grid the running costs would be negligable compared to existing pumping systems.
 
So why haven't our politicians and all the experts they pay to consult on this subject not considered this option? It sounds ridiculously simple and cost effective once the initial infrastructure was built.
 
Julia said:
So why haven't our politicians and all the experts they pay to consult on this subject not considered this option? It sounds ridiculously simple and cost effective once the initial infrastructure was built.
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Reflecting on my experience with politicans (often agents for businesses) and engineers etc in Civil Construction, maybe with a bit of a cynicism, I'd say it doesn't provide anywhere near as much revenue for designers, consultants etc as the big dam proposals.
 
Wysiwyg said:
More practical would be connecting all storm water drains that run into the river and pumping the water to a treatment plant. This would also solve the problem of plastics entering the aquatic system.
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If you're going to use heavily contaminated storm water to produce drinking quality water then why not just use sea water instead?

Storm water contains everything from illegally dumped chemicals, sewage, cigarette butts, soil, oil, petrol and so on.

In terms of safety etc, let's just say it's safe to swim in the ocean (salt water) but there's a good reason why councils errect signs telling you to keep well away from storm water outfalls as the water isn't safe for human contact without extensive treatment.

Why not just use salt water instead of trying to clean up storm water?
 
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